Examiner Oks Plan For Basalt Quarry

Bert Wolfrum lives on 150 acres on the South Kentuck Trail near Spangle.

His back pasture has a small basalt quarry that was last mined during the 1930s, he said. Old rusted cables were left on the property as evidence of the past activity.

There’s a small lake in the old pit.

Now, Wolfrum wants to expand the quarry and mine more of the scabland rock, which would be crushed and used for road projects in the region.

But the mining operation is only part of Wolfrum’s thinking.

He said his long-range plan is to turn the quarry into a lake that would become a year-round water source for wildlife in the area.

“The key to this is the reclamation plan,” said Wolfrum, who is retired from the Air National Guard.

“I’m going to be dead in some years, and I want this done perfectly.”

He said he is working with scientists and government agencies to come up with a plan that protects nearby wetlands from the disruption of mining activity. The reclamation also would create an environmentally friendly habitat in the future, he said.

Last month, the Spokane County hearing examiner gave verbal approval to a zone change allowing Wolfrum to pursue his plans on 66 acres of his property.

No one showed up at the Dec. 10 public hearing to oppose the zone change. However, a property owner living nearby wrote a letter to the county expressing concerns about how the mining would affect wildlife during the excavation and the possibility it could alter groundwater flows into a water well on the adjacent property.

County officials determined that the project had no significant environmental problems.

The land Wolfrum owns has been zoned exclusively for agriculture, which forced him to seek the rezone for the mine area.

Because of the contour of the land, he said, the quarry site cannot be seen from the nearby Spangle-Waverly Road, which borders the property on the south.

Wolfrum said the land is not good for agriculture other than a little bit of grazing during the spring.

“All it will ever be good for is wildlife and recreation in the future,” he said.

, DataTimes