Save SHollenberger Park and The Petaluma Wetlands Attend Hearing TUES Oct. 12 2 PM

Decision time on big asphalt, mining plans
https://www.pressdemocrat.com/articl...p=all&tc=pgall

By BRETT WILKISON
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Published: Saturday, October 9, 2010 at 2:56 p.m.

Asphalt, rock and gravel.

Three industrial projects that would manufacture or mine those materials are set to come up before the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors over the next three weeks in what promises to be a lengthy and contentious set of hearings.

The first, on Tuesday, focuses on the proposed Dutra asphalt plant south of Petaluma. Subsequent hearings will look at the proposed Roblar Road rock quarry west of Cotati and a large gravel mining operation slated for the Russian River outside of Geyserville.

County officials and others who monitor land-use in the area say the tightly-packed series of hearings, all before the Nov. 2 election, will call for difficult votes on highly controversial issues.

“They're big projects,” said Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Valerie Brown. “Any time you have something that has this much impact . . . it is significant.”

Brown, the board chairwoman, said she sees all three projects as touching on a perennial sore point for county government: maintaining roads and improving transportation infrastructure.

Local materials are needed for such efforts, she said, and job creation is also foremost on leaders’ minds.

“How do you grow an economy for the future?” she said.

But however the board votes this month, Brown said she doubted it would set lasting direction on controversial land-use projects for the board of supervisors that convenes next year with two new members.

“I think the county is going to go up and down and backwards and forwards on these projects,” she said. “There’s nothing that’s predictable.”

The Dutra asphalt plant, proposed for 37 acres along the Petaluma River, has been in the pipeline for five years and has come before the Board of Supervisors several times.

Officials with the San Rafael-based Dutra Group say the latest version of the plant — which would replace the former Dutra plant on South Petaluma Boulevard — has been downscaled to address previous concerns about noise levels and impacts on air and water quality.

A recycled-material crushing operation has been eliminated, peak production reduced by 25 percent and a barge off-loading site moved to a nearby industrial dock operated by Shamrock Materials. Aggregate from that location will be moved to the asphalt plant by either conveyor belt or trucks.

Dutra representatives also say the plant will have state-of-the-art equipment that will limit emissions well below regulatory thresholds set by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District.

“The project has been studied thoroughly and the studies have shown that there are no significant health impacts from the plant as proposed,” said company spokeswoman Aimi Dutra.

Opponents, however, say the plant, with an annual production capacity 570,425 tons of asphalt and rock material, would be a toxic eyesore marring the southern gateway to Petaluma. It would require both a General Plan amendment — from “limited commercial” to “limited industrial” — and a zoning change.

Most recently critics have stuck to their concerns about the plant’s health impacts, especially on children, and its affect on nearby Shollenberger Park.

“It's still a toxic and noxious facility in the wrong location,” said David Keller of the Petaluma River Council.

The Roblar Road quarry, set to go before the Board of Supervisors Oct. 19, has stirred up an equally acrimonious debate.

Proposed by former North Bay Construction owner John Barella, and in the works now for seven years, the project west of Cotati would produce about 11 million cubic yards of construction-grade rock worth about $60 million over at least 20 years.

Opponents, including a vocal group of area residents, say the quarry could contaminate groundwater and release airborne toxins because it’s located adjacent to a shuttered, uncapped former county landfill.

Barella has said that safeguards and mitigation measures will prevent any pollution leaks. “We’re not walking away from any responsibilities,” he said.

But opponents also have hit upon what they see as possibly a larger stumbling block: The preferred haul route crosses four acres of dairy land protected by the county with a taxpayer-funded conservation easement. Unlike the project itself, the quarry’s use of the protected property would need unanimous approval by the Board of Supervisors.

“This is a county-wide issue,” said Sue Buxton, who lives near the site and leads Citizens Against Roblar Road Quarry, the main opposition group. “The whole point of a conservation easement is to preserve open space in perpetuity.”

Farther north, the Russian River gravel mine proposed by Napa-based Syar Industries has moved far more quickly and quietly through the approval process.

The project, which goes before the board of supervisors Oct. 26, calls for mining over a 15-year period in 14 gravel bars along a 6.5-mile stretch of river north of the Jimtown Bridge. Part of the project-area was previously permitted for in-stream mining, and the entire area is private property and within a zone designated for in-stream mining by a 1994 county mining plan.

The 350-page environmental impact report has more than 100 pages of planned mitigations for impacts to the riverbed, water quality, vegetation, wildlife and roads.

But opponents say that nearly 500 daily truck trips and additional industrial activity associated with the mining will irreversibly harm the Russian River, a key scenic and natural resource in the area.

“The proposed project EIR has failed to demonstrate that our community needs the volume of gravel extraction proposed and the project will create adverse impacts, some that cannot be mitigated,” states a letter circulated by the environmental group Russian Riverkeeper.