Permit granted to Wandermere asphalt plant

Inland Asphalt has the permit it needs to start operations at a Wandermere area asphalt plant, but company officials still have issues with the process.

Now the company is taking its beef to the Spokane County Air Pollution Control Authority board of directors at a special meeting this morning.

SCAPCA issued the company its permit last week. But Central Pre-Mix President Mark Murphy said Monday that a delay in the process came at a considerable cost to Inland Asphalt, which had hoped to have the plant up and running by the beginning of the construction season.

Central Pre-Mix owns Inland Asphalt.

“We have a problem with how it was handled. How do we treat businesses when they want to operate in our county?” Murphy asked of SCAPCA and Spokane County officials. “Are we here to get in the way of people?”

Murphy said today’s SCAPCA meeting was initiated by Inland Asphalt’s attorneys.

“There’s a lot of businesses that have concerns. It’s my job to make sure they’re heard,” said Matthew Pederson, SCAPCA Board chairman and Airway Heights city councilman.

Inland Asphalt’s concerns stem from contradictory rulings about whether an asphalt plant is permitted in its Wandermere location at 13302 N. Perry Road.

In 1999, SCAPCA gave the plant a determination of nonsignificance, a first step toward operation.

But based on information later provided by Spokane County, SCAPCA changed its opinion, and said the plant was not an approved use in its location, said SCAPCA Director Eric Skelton.

“The whole thing got off track,” said Murphy.

Neighbors opposed the plant because it doesn’t meet the original terms of a 1979 agreement with the county to mine the site, wrote Meg Arpin, the attorney representing the Wandermere Estates Homeowners Association in a letter about the project.

Wandermere Estates is a neighboring senior living community. Further residential and commercial development is planned for the area.

The same conditions referenced by Arpin are the reason the county determined earlier this year that the plant could not operate in its planned location, said Spokane County Assistant Director of Planning John Pederson.

But three days after he wrote to SCAPCA with that information, Pederson’s opinion was overruled by Building and Planning Director Jim Manson.

“It was a question as to whether or not the conditions that were placed on the initial rezone carried over to the present day,” said Manson.

When the rezone took place, Spokane County had two categories for mining lands. One permitted asphalt plants, the other – under which the site was zoned – did not. But since then, the county has combined the two mining categories into one where asphalt plants are a permitted use, Manson explained.

After Spokane County reversed its conclusion three days later, SCAPCA also changed its ruling back again, paving the way for the plant.

Just how the process became confused is the question, said Pederson.

“It’s not necessarily a matter of (just) getting what you want,” he said.