The Bureau of Indian Affairs filed its decision to take 631 acres outside Chico, Calif., into trust on behalf of the Mechoopda Indian Tribe.

The action nearly coincided with Clark County commissioners sending a letter to federal officials on the same issue. It asks if the county’s refusal to strike a deal with the Cowlitz Indian Tribe could block the tribe’s casino project.

The significance to the proposed Cowlitz casino near La Center is that the Mechoopda Tribe doesn’t have a memorandum of understanding with Butte County, Calif. In fact, the Butte County board of supervisors already has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court seeking to block the tribe from building a casino.

“This is a landless tribe in California,” said Phil Harju, a member of the Cowlitz Tribal Council and its designated casino spokesman. “The Bureau of Indian Affairs has taken the land in trust, to the objection of the county I may add, and without a memorandum of understanding.”

Mechoopda tribal representatives could not be reached for comment, but the tribe reportedly wants to build a casino with 550 to 600 slot machines and 10 gambling tables.

In comparison, Cowlitz tribal member David Barnett, in partnership with the Mohegan Tribe of Connecticut, proposes to build a much larger project near La Center: a 134,150-square-foot casino with 3,000 video gambling machines, 135 gambling tables and 20 poker tables.

Tom Hunt, a spokesman for the anti-casino group Citizens Against Reservation Shopping, said the federal government’s decision regarding the Mechoopda Tribe “is certainly not alarming by itself.”

“They look at each of these as separate cases,” he said. “And there are so many factors in this (Cowlitz) application that argue against them taking the land into trust.”

Earlier this week, Clark County commissioners sent a brief letter to Carl Artman, assistant Interior secretary for Indian affairs, seeking clarification on the importance of a county-tribe memorandum of understanding.

Commissioners wanted to know if the federal government will reject the tribe’s request to establish a 152-acre reservation along Interstate 5 if the county refuses to negotiate a new agreement to replace the 2004 deal that was struck down last year.

All three commissioners signed a letter saying that commissioners were told during recent public hearings that without a memorandum of understanding, the federal government would deny the Cowlitz casino request. The letter says the group making that assertion relied on a taped interview with George Skibine, director of the Interior Department’s Office of Indian Gaming.

But Hunt, who was part of that Dec. 10, 2007, interview with Skibine, said his group has never said “no memorandum of understanding, no casino approval.”

“If they are referring to CARS, I think they have done us a disservice because we have never characterized it like that,” he said.

Skibine, in an interview with The Columbian that same month, said there is no legal requirement for tribes to have agreements with local governments, but such deals are “highly recommended.”