County Residents Fight Mining Rezone

James Andrews is an environmental journalism major at WesternWashington University.

A row of orange-tagged trees signifies Paul Brass and Su Halon’s property line less than 30 yards from their home in the forested hills south of Acme. Wooded terrain blends seamlessly across the boundary, while a salmon stream cuts through it and runs behind the house. Orange tags aside, nothing distinguishes one property from the other.

But Brass and Halon, who retired and moved to their home in 2003, fear the adjacent property might soon become part of a 280-acre expansion of an open-pit gravel mine. Along with more than 100 vocal Whatcom County residents, they have urged county planners to reevaluate a zoning proposal by gravel-mining company Concrete Nor’west. The proposal would change the designations of a commercial forestry zone near Saxon Road to allow for mining project applications.

Concrete Nor’west, a division of Auburn-based Miles Sand & Gravel, owns 360 acres of land near Acme, including the property next to Brass and Halon. The land is also near eight family-owned farms, dozens of residential homes and within the watersheds of the Nooksack and Samish rivers.

On December 1, 2009, the county planning department cited the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) and issued a determination of nonsignificance (DNS) regarding the proposed rezone. This meant that changing the zoning would not require an evaluation of any potential environmental impacts.

During the 14-day comment period after the DNS was issued, concerned residents inundated the department with almost 150 letters and e-mails regarding the proposal. Every single one opposed it.

On Dec. 28, 2009, the planning department acknowledged the feedback when it withdrew the DNS and issued a mitigated determination of nonsignificance (MDNS) in its place. Unlike the original determination, the MDNS requires that developers build environmentally conscious measures into their proposal to reduce potential adverse impacts.

But nearby residents aren’t satisfied — they say they want to know how the environmental impacts of a gravel mine could be reduced to nonsignificant levels.

“If you look at the area Concrete Nor’west is proposing to rezone, it’s ridiculous,” said Anna Martin, owner of Osprey Hill Farm, which is directly across Saxon Road from part of the proposed zone.

“This area is the headwaters for the Samish,” Martin said. “It’s less than 400 feet within range of the Nooksack. $60 million has been thrown down to restore salmon habitats right here. There’s the endangered species act, the critical area ordinance — there are so many things stacked against the mining project.”

To protest the proposal, Martin and approximately 45 neighbors joined into a group called the Friends of the Nooksack Samish Watershed. The group hired a lawyer and entered an official appeal on Jan. 22, 2010 to change the county’s stance to a determination of significance, which would require a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to evaluate potential environmental impacts of mining projects on the land. In such a case, Concrete Nor’west would have to pay for the environmental assessment before any rezoning could occur.

After issuing the MDNS, County Planning Director David Stalheim sent out a statement reminding concerned parties that Concrete Nor’west must still apply for permits to develop on the property — a separate issue from a zoning change — and that “subsequent permit applications would be subject to additional environmental review” under SEPA.

Still, Martin said that she and her neighbors plan to protest every part of the process. According to residents, approximately two years ago Concrete Nor’west began work on a 40-acre mine on neighboring Bowman Road, where land was rezoned from a previous proposal by the company.

Suzanne Shull lives next to the existing mine. She said that nearby residents were unaware that any mining projects might occur in their area until the concrete company’s trucks appeared. When she and others complained to the planning department, she said that they were told they should have commented when the zoning change was first proposed. For the current proposal, Shull said planners have told the group to hold comments until Concrete Nor’west applies for future mining projects on the 280-acre expansion, assuming the proposed area gets rezoned. The presence of the existing mine, however, leaves the neighborhood group adamant to protest the new rezoning itself.

Shull and Martin both questioned why planners considered this area a potential candidate for a mining zone. A map of Whatcom County from the June 2008 Comprehensive Plan (Map 21) highlights several areas as “potential sand and gravel resources,” but the Concrete Nor’west site in question is not one of them. The map designates the current mine on Bowman Road as mineral resource land, a zoning ordinance that Brass and others said they wished they had known to protest when it was under review.

“They came in here and started mining under stealth,” said Brass, whose home is half a mile south of the Bowman Road mine. “We had no inkling that this would happen. No warning — nothing. We were just driving home one day and they were here, knocking down the trees.”

In letters written to county planners, Brass and Halon said operations on the current gravel pit have considerably harmed their neighborhood. They wrote that the loss of trees in the area has led to more frequent power outages from downed lines during windstorms, that noise from mining machinery is a considerable nuisance and that the increased traffic from large vehicles on their narrow roads poses a danger to residents.

But primarily, they wrote about the effects any future mining project might have on native wildlife. Brass said that within or near his property he has witnessed beavers, herons, owls, hares, cougars, bears and three species of salmon. He said he sees deer daily.

“It is obvious that all these creatures will be endangered . . . by the extreme devastation of the forested land that will be caused by a 280-acre expansion of the quarry, which, for animals, is nothing but a dead desert,” Brass wrote in a letter to county planners.

Concrete Nor’west has not yet specified any projects for the 280-acre expansion. In a response to the planning department’s issuance of the MDNS, the company’s attorney reiterated that until Concrete Nor’west applies for a project-specific permit, citizen protest is based on speculation.

“The comment letters generally focus on impacts that may occur from unmitigated mining activity. The overarching themes focus on impacts related to dust, traffic, noise and water quality,” the attorney’s statement reads. “However, none of the potential problems cited will occur as a result of the modification of the Comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance to include property within a mineral resource land overlay district (MRL). The inclusion of the subject property in the MRL will not generate any dust, traffic, noise or impacts to water quality.”

Martin and neighboring farm owners see the prospective of an expanded mining project as a direct threat to their livelihoods. Nick Guilford, owner of Sunseed Farm on Saxon Road, said a neighboring mine would devastate his produce business.

“It’s already challenging enough to attract people here for U-picking,” Guilford said. “They do it, but only because it’s so nice out here. Picking berries next to a 300-acre gravel pit wouldn’t exactly be desirable.”

While the current 40-acre mine is more than half a mile from his farm, Guilford said that he has found dust coating his plants in the past. If the mining project advanced to Concrete Nor’west’s parcel across the road, he said he believes the dust could severely compromise his operations.

Guilford and Martin are also concerned that nearby mining could contaminate or dry up their wells.

“Without the guaranteed quality to my water, I can’t sustain my farming business,” Martin said.

Martin said the outpouring of comments from Whatcom County residents encourages her. She said she has never heard of a designation changing in response to public concern like this.

For now, the neighborhood group plans focus on the appeal process, on which Martin said her family’s future might hinge. She summarized the consensus of the neighborhood in one sentence: “That project being here and me living here are not compatible.” §