Hearing On Expansion Of Gravel Pit Canceled By Glitch County Failed To Notify All Affected Neighbors, Plans To Set New Hearing
Forty-three Green Bluff residents showed up for a county hearing Wednesday only to learn it was canceled because of a technicality.
Notice of the hearing on the county’s plans to expand a pit where rock is mined and crushed into gravel was not mailed to neighbors in a broad enough area, explained Hearing Examiner Mike Dempsey.
Five property owners who should have been notified were not. If the hearing went ahead, Dempsey said, a judge could use the inadequate notification as a reason to overturn any decision he might make.
Dempsey could do little but apologize to people who took time off from work or drove about 20 miles from the agricultural area south of Mount Spokane to the courthouse.
“This is the first time this has happened, that we’ve had a notification problem where we need to cancel a meeting,” said Dempsey, who became hearing examiner about a year ago. “I know that’s of little consolation to you folks.”
Dempsey learned of the planning department’s snafu Tuesday afternoon. He decided to cancel the hearing Wednesday morning - too late to inform people who had been notified of the meeting.
A story in Wednesday’s Spokesman-Review noted that the hearing might be canceled.
Dempsey said the hearing probably will be rescheduled in about 30 days. In the meantime, the county planning department promised to hold an informal meeting in Green Bluff to hear residents’ concerns about the gravel operation. The date and location of that meeting was not set.
Green Bluff residents came ready to argue that the existing pit - some call it a strip mine - is illegal since the land is zoned for farming instead of mining.
Without the zone change, “no further … mineral extraction can take place legally,” zoning enforcement officer Allan deLaubenfels wrote in a letter to one Green Bluff resident.
The pit covers about six acres of a 33-acre county parcel.
The county wants to buy another 100 acres, about 20 acres of which is basalt rock that can be crushed into gravel. The engineering department is asking Dempsey, a county employee whose decisions can be appealed to county commissioners, to zone the entire 133 acres for mining.
Neighbors also contend the county didn’t give enough consideration to the noise, dust and erosion when it determined the pit’s environmental impact is “non-significant.”
“It (dust) is so bad when those trucks are working that you can’t see the trucks,” said one woman. She complained that subcontractors don’t water the access road to control dust unless neighbors complain to the state Department of Ecology.
County engineers say about 1.1 million cubic yards of rock would be removed from the pit over the next 50 years. The crushed rock will be used on roads in the Green Bluff area, engineers said.
, DataTimes