Syar seeks extension to mine in Russian River

<p>Syar Industries' permission to mine gravel from the Russian River ends in April, but the mining company is resurrecting an epic Sonoma County environmental debate by seeking a five-year extension.</p><p>Although a decision by county supervisors is about a year off, Syar's request will rekindle heated arguments over whether local demand for high-quality rock trumps what critics say is ruination of the river and destruction of fish habitat.</p><p>The issue of mining on gravel terraces adjacent to the river has been largely dormant over the last few years as Napa-based Syar has methodically worked its way through its permit to rake 100 acres of rock off river banks south of Healdsburg over a 10-year span. Another mining company, Hanson Aggregates of Pleasanton, quit terrace mining in 2003 and uses trucks and barges to transport rock to Sonoma County from Canada and the East Bay.</p><p>Board Chairman Paul Kelley, whose district includes the river mining area, said he did not know why the company applied for an extension and said he hasn't studied the request sufficiently to form a position.</p><p>But west county Supervisor Mike Reilly, the board's strongest environmentalist, said he knows of no reason to grant the request.</p><p>"Unless something new has happened in the last 10 years, I don't see any reason to extend it," he said.</p><p>The first of many confrontations over the issue is set for Wednesday when staffers of the county Permit and Resource Management Department hold a "scoping" session to collect public comment on environmental issues that should be considered in connection with Syar's extension request. After that, there'll be an environmental impact report followed by Planning Commission hearings and ultimately a decision by supervisors.</p><p>"It is a process that takes nine to 15 months," said Mike Sotok, the county's senior environmental specialist. "It is certainly not getting done by April."</p><p>Syar's application does not seek to extract more rock out of river beds than currently permitted. Rather, it wants to pull rock out of the remaining 20-acre site over a five-year period because it can't get it out by the April 15 deadline.</p><p>Syar officials argue that a time-consuming permit process and delays associated with an unrelated lawsuit prevented the company from mining during the crucial June-to-October season last year.</p><p>Syar officials were not available Friday for comment about their request.</p><p>In the application, company president Jim Syar argues that Sonoma County's hard-rock quarries have yet to produce the high-quality aggregate necessary for numerous highway and housing projects coming online over the next several years. Keeping the Russian River source open as an option would help hold down construction costs, Syar said.</p><p>Ironically, supervisors are holding a hearing Tuesday on a request by Canyon Rock Company to expand its existing quarry near Forestville. The supervisors' votes on this and on Syar's requests will be scrutinized by the home building and construction industries as well as environmental groups.</p><p>David Keller, who heads the river protection group Friends of the Eel River, said environmental groups will fight Syar's request because gravel from the Russian River isn't necessary to the local economy and the company hasn't funded river habitat reclamation projects for impacts on the 80 acres it has already mined.</p><p>"This is a water resource that is being cannibalized for the sake of the construction industry and it's simply not needed when they have other sources available," Keller said. "It is cynical, dishonest, unscientific and uneconomic for them to argue that it has become the environmentally acceptable thing to do."</p><p>Terrace mining in the Russian River has been decreasing since 1994, when supervisors enacted the Aggregate Resources Management plan, which was designed to limit environmental impacts of mining and shift production to quarries. The amount of terrace-mined material has declined from 53 percent of the county's total aggregate production in 2001 to 25 percent in 2003, as quarries increasingly became the source for rock.</p>