County OKs extension of gravel mining

<p>Syar Industries has three years to complete its half-finished gravel-mining project along the Russian River under an extension reluctantly granted Tuesday by Sonoma County supervisors.</p><p>On a 3-2 vote, the board decided the Napa-based company could take up where it left off in 2006 and finish mining the remaining 60 percent of a gravel pit located in a river terrace. Syar applied for a special extension because it wasn't able to extract its permitted amount of gravel by an April 2006 deadline.</p><p>Paul Kelley, the north county supervisor whose district includes the Russian River's upper reaches, said the extension is limited to the amount of gravel that the company had previously received permission to mine.</p><p>"It is for the express purpose of finishing what was started," Kelley said.</p><p>However, Mike Reilly, the board's environmental advocate who represents areas in the river's lower reaches, rejected that argument. He said all permits issued under the 10-year Aggregate Resources Management Plan had expired, and construction materials are now available through quarries and importation.</p><p>"The larger issue is whether you agree this is a special circumstance to allow the mining," Reilly said. "Most of the delays have been self-inflicted. The county has adequate sources of aggregate."</p><p>Sonoma Valley Supervisor Valerie Brown joined Reilly in voting against permit extension, saying that "many people believed there was a certain date" when riverside gravel mining would end.</p><p>Supervisors Tim Smith and Mike Kerns sided with Kelley in arguing that Syar deserved the chance to finish its previously approved mining project and to follow through on the reclamation it had promised to perform in the terrace pit.</p><p>Smith disagreed with Reilly on reasons for delays, saying the county permit process and a lawsuit filed by opponents were as much responsible as extraction-equipment problems experienced by Syar machinery.</p><p>He also suggested it was hypocritical for environmental activists to object to riverside gravel mining while favoring the fuel-consuming alternative of moving rock by barge from Canada and by truck to construction sites.</p><p>"The fact is, that land has already been altered," Smith said. "The bottom line is having that resource available."</p><p>Syar's request for permit extension reignited a decade-old dispute over Russian River terrace mining. Ever since the mid-1990s, environmentalists and river-area residents have battled with gravel companies and construction operations over whether pit mining damages water quality, aquifer levels and fish habitat as well as agriculture.</p><p>In 1996, the Board of Supervisors enacted an Aggregate Resources Management Plan, which remains in effect, although permits expired two years ago.</p><p>A major goal of the plan was encouragement of quarry mining, which has run into opposition from residents and environmentalists similar to that registered against the terrace pit mine.</p><p>Company officials have said mining operations could begin soon after permit approval and would end for the year when it starts raining.</p><p>Under the permit extension, trucks can use the haul road only from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays and until 1 p.m. Saturdays. The permit extension will return to supervisors for a final vote Oct. 7.</p><p>You can reach Staff Writer Bleys W. Rose at 521-5431 or bleys.rose@pressdemocrat.com.</p>