So far, the government has attempted to limit public opinion and finesse scientific review. At the initial SEIS scoping workshops in Sacramento the Bureau of Land Management prohibited oral testimony. This stand led to a confrontation with activists who took over the meeting and conducted a public hearing placing oral testimony into the administrative record. Testimony by dump opponents during hearings by the National Academy of Sciences was strictly limited in favor of presentations by dump proponents. The process to date has not instilled much confidence that the SEIS will be an objective study.

The Fort Mojave, Chemehuevi, Cocopah, Quechan and Colorado River Indian Tribes, unified as the Colorado River Native Nations Alliance, have requested status as a "cooperating agency" in the SEIS process. This designation gives the tribes an opportunity to be directly involved in the drafting, scope and analysis of the final SEIS document. In this way, the Colorado River Native Nations Alliance could more directly assert the importance of Ward Valley and the desert tortoise to indigenous culture, religious and economic interests.

Bureau of Land Management State Director Ed Hastey rejected their request. In doing so, Hastey has violated environmental justice mandates which invite Indian tribes to obtain this special status so that they may fully participate in land-use planning processes and protect their interests. The bitter history of the government's exploitation of Indian lands continues with the dump proposal.

Responding to the decision to deny them access to the SEIS process, Fort Mojave tribal leader Steve Lopez remarked, "First they force us off our traditional lands and put us on reservations, then they accuse us of living off the government. We want to be self-sufficient, we want to be able to farm our lands and now, after threatening to poison our land and our water, they refuse to recognize our rights."

In 1994, President Clinton signed the Executive Order on Environmental Justice recognizing that low-income and communities of color suffer disproportionately from environmental hazards. The Order designated the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as the lead federal agency for implementation of guidelines to achieve environmental justice in all federal actions. Other agencies, such as the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Land Management and the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service are required to consider their actions in relation to environmental justice concerns. Last year, at the urging of the Colorado River Native Nations Alliance (Fort Mojave, Chemehuevi, Cocopah, Quechan and Colorado River Indian Tribes), the Environmental EPA's National Environmental Justice Advisory Committee (NEJAC) designated the dump proposal as an environmental justice issue and called for an environmental justice impact analysis. The Tribes have asserted repeatedly that the dump project would violate their human rights and have called upon the EPA to halt the project.