Pit Plan Stirs Up Dust District Road Foreman Wants To Operate Rock Mine

Verland Woempner can’t seem to do anything with his land these days without starting a fight with neighbors or family members.

The 58-year-old road foreman for the Kootenai County East Side Highway District has applied to put an open pit mine on five of his 160 acres overlooking Lake Coeur d’Alene’s Squaw Bay.

While logging his land earlier this year to pay off a debt to his sister, Woempner discovered a good supply of basalt rock at the top of a ridge.

With the help of a portable rock crusher owned by his neighbor and partner, Don McCaw, Woempner wants to sell gravel to his employer, the highway district.

He said he understands why some people consider the idea a conflict of interest.

“I suppose it is. How can I put this? Other people are in business and then they operate another job at their homes,” he said. “The commission has endorsed it.”

He was referring to the East Side Highway District, whose three commissioners sent a letter to Kootenai County expressing their approval of Woempner’s pit.

“The East Side Highway District is in favor of McCaw and Woempner Quarry for the following reason: The quarry is more convenient in location,” the letter states. “This will save the highway district and general public in travel time.”

Currently, it takes about 3-1/2 hours round trip for highway district trucks to bring gravel back to the east side of the lake, Woempner said.

“If I get the permit, we will be within minutes,” he said.

But he’s in for a fight.

Woempner’s neighbors have formed the Greater Squaw Bay Association and hired attorney Scott Reed to fight Woempner’s plan, but not because of any possible conflict of interest.

“It’s totally the wrong thing in the wrong place,” Reed said. “There is no justification for having a gravel pit in a prime lakefront, residential area.”

The Kootenai County Planning Department has set a Jan. 20 public hearing for Woempner’s conditional use permit application.

“I’m here to say the hearing will be well-attended,” Reed said.

Woempner doesn’t know what all the excitement is about. It’s his land, and he has to follow federal and state environmental regulations.

“It’s not as bad as it’s been made out to be,” he said. “Whenever you put the words `surface mine’ on an application, it puts a red flag in front of everybody.”

At 58, Woempner is looking for more security as he approaches retirement.

He’s worked 20 years for the highway district and he also raises 14 head of cattle. In the summer, he cuts hay on the 35 acres that his grandfather cleared with a team of mules and oxen.

“We’ve tried to take care of the land,” Woempner said. “I feel bad I had to log it as hard as I have - but I had to do it to keep the place.”

Woempner logged the land to pay the $200,000 he agreed to pay his sister as a settlement of their parents’ estate.

His sister, Shirley Marsan, 56, said she gave Woempner approval to log her remaining 40 acres - but only if he couldn’t raise enough money by logging his 160 acres.

“Shortly after he started logging his acres, the weather got bad and he moved onto my 40,” she said. “That was not what the verbal agreement was.”

So she put up a fence, keeping the logging crews out of her 40 acres.

Woempner then sued his sister. She sued him back. After being close-knit in childhood, the two siblings now don’t speak to each other.

“It’s very painful and very emotional,” Marsan said. “It’s just a heartbreaking mess.”

Woempner said he hopes something can be worked out.

“We tried negotiating things and it didn’t work,” he said. “But time heals a lot of things.”

Marsan also shares neighbors’ concerns about Woempner’s plans for the gravel mine.

“It looks like a conflict of interest,” Marsan said of her brother’s plans to sell the gravel to the highway district. “But I can’t say too much. My husband works for the same outfit.”

She also is worried about how close the gravel pit would be to her property line.

“I think it’s about 250 feet,” Marsan said. “I think it would devalue the land.”

That is one of the major arguments by members of the Greater Squaw Bay Association.

Charlotte Green and her husband have land that border’s Woempner.

“We’re almost certain it would not only hurt property value, but it would make it difficult to sell our home,” Green said. “We don’t know how you could sell your home with a rock mine in your neighborhood.”

Barbara Dorrell lives near where Woempner built an access road to get to the rock source.

“The property owners are concerned that once a permit is issued, that means anybody could buy them out and make a larger operation,” Dorrell said.

Woempner said he plans to alter hours of operation to cut down on problems with noise. He also has plans to deal with dust and water runoff.

“We don’t raise a stink about neighbors as long as they leave us alone,” he said. “All the old-timers around here don’t have any problem with this. It seems to be all the influx of new people who brought their ideas to the area.”

Woempner hopes that county officials will agree with his plan. Woempner’s application is in order, except that it lacks a letter of comment from the state Division of Environmental Quality.

“As long as we try to stay within their guidelines and cooperate as best we can with people, I can’t see why they should not be able to issue us a permit.”