FRESNO, Calif. – A controversial gravel mining project north of Fresno near the San Joaquin River received a temporary stop sign Thursday by the Fresno County Planning Commission.
Multinational mining company CEMEX proposed expanding their current operation on the river into a 600-foot deep blast mine with a 100-year timeline. However, county staff recommended a shallower, shorter project alternative.
By a 3-3 deadlocked vote, commission members rejected the modified proposal, which had required a majority for approval.
“This is going to impact the cities and the people who live in the area. I have a real major concern with that,” Fresno Planning Commission Vice Chair Glenda Hill said from the dais. “It’s probably a really good project. But it’s in the wrong location.”
Hill, along with commission member James Quist and chair Ken Abrahamian, voted against the proposal, while David Borchardt, Kyle Chaney and John Arabian voted in favor. Pablo Villagrana and Lawrence Garcia were absent. Michelle Roman left the meeting prior to the vote.
CEMEX is expected to appeal the Planning Commission’s decision to the Fresno County Board of Supervisors at an undetermined date. Company representatives declined to comment after the meeting.
The meeting on Oct. 8 was the longest and most well-attended Planning Commission meeting in at least a decade, Abrahamian told KVPR following the 5-hour, 20-minute hearing.
With the Hall of Records meeting chambers at standing room-only capacity, interested speakers and observers queued in the lobby and adjacent rooms.
Seventy-seven people gave public comments following a presentation by CEMEX lawyers and executives that emphasized the need for gravel aggregate in construction projects and the future employment of roughly 95 people who work at the company’s plant and quarry sites along Friant Road.
Permits for the company’s existing operations, the last gravel mine on that stretch of the San Joaquin River, expire next year.
“I stand before you as a representative emphasizing the importance of this project to [CEMEX employees],” vice president and general manager Nathan Layfield told the commission. “They’re looking at me and they’re asking, ‘Am I going to continue to have a job?’ ”
CEMEX reps also attempted to poke holes in a recent report by the California Geological Survey that indicated Fresno County already has roughly twice the amount of aggregate reserves in permitted mines it needs for the next 50 years.
While gravel mining has been part of the San Joaquin River landscape since the early 1900s, all used traditional alluvial methods, which involve digging and excavating using heavy machinery.
What CEMEX proposes, to blast and drill into the granite bedrock near the river, is entirely new for the area.
After 15 people spoke in favor of the project – all of them CEMEX employees, labor representatives and business advocates – 62 Fresno and Madera county residents of a wide range of ages and ethnicities spoke against it.
That ratio mirrors public response to the project’s recently published final Environmental Impact Report. Of the 204 comments received by county staff, 168 were opposed.
The company’s 352-acre quarry site, roughly 2.5 miles north of Fresno, sits within the San Joaquin River Parkway footprint, borders Lost Lake Park, is across the river from a recently announced state park and located a stone’s throw from spawning beds integral for the restoration of Chinook salmon runs.
Other potential issues raised by speakers included impacts to air quality, riparian habitat, traffic on Friant Road (the Planning Commission recently approved a 5,000-home senior housing a quarter-mile from the proposed blast mine), residential water wells, water quality in the river and the dozens of environmental violations and fines imposed against CEMEX at other mining sites over the last two decades.
Some of the most pointed comments came from Table Mountain Rancheria Tribal Chair Michelle Heredia-Cordova after CEMEX attorney Pat Mitchell sought to downplay environmental and cultural damage that might occur because the site had already been “disturbed” by gravel mining.
“It’s already wrecked, so give us permission to wreck it some more,” Heredia-Cordova said. “How does that make any sense?”
Fresno resident and elementary school principal Ron Bohigian brought up the abundance of granite throughout Fresno County and questioned the need for a hard rock mine in an environmentally sensitive habitat near California’s second-longest river.
“Aggregate, jobs and a world-class parkway: How can we have all of that together?” Bohigian said. “The entire valley is underlain by granite next to the foothills. I don’t think a serious look has been given to where granite can be mined.”
Multiple commissioners picked up on this line of thinking and questioned county staff whether they had looked at alternative locations.
The answer was “No.” Why? Because state environmental laws don’t require them to.
“When you have a project that involves resources … like aggregate materials, there’s a provision in CEQA that you need not look at alternative locations,” said Bruce Steubing of Benchmark Resources, the firm that prepared the project’s environmental analysis.
“So we relied on that in not looking at other locations,” Steubing added.
At least one commissioner was not satisfied by that explanation.
“I thought that would have driven the county to do a little more looking,” Quist said.
In the end, commissioners voted on an alternative to the project recommended by county staff that would’ve limited the blast mine to a depth of 300 feet (half of what CEMEX proposed) for a duration of 63 years (as opposed to 100) and required an additional 100 feet of setback from the river.
But even that motion failed to receive a necessary majority.
CEMEX has up to 15 days from Thursday’s hearing to appeal the Planning Commission’s decision to the Fresno County Board of Supervisors.
