Poway Council OKs Limited Quarry Expansion : Mining: Neighbors wanted the facility shut down, and CalMat Co. wanted a much larger operation.

The Poway City Council has approved a modest expansion of a rock-mining and crushing operation near residences in south Poway.

The 4-1 decision Tuesday falls far short of the quarry’s expansion request, but also rejects the demands of some neighbors who wanted the operation shut down.

“I’m really tired of the noise and the traffic starting at 6 a.m., six days a week,” Diane Dallich said at the meeting. Dallich lives a quarter of a mile from the quarry.

However, if the quarry can prove the operation as mandated by the council is financially infeasible, the city might be forced to either allow for the larger expansion of the project or reduce some of the conditions it imposed, officials said.

The council accepted a staff recommendation to allow a 13.5-acre expansion of the 83-acre aggregate mining, concrete and rock crushing operation for an undetermined period. The decision does not allow for the introduction of an asphalt-making plant for which CalMat Co., the owners and operators of the quarry, had applied.

CalMat also must spend up to $5 million to reduce noise, traffic and pollution, with construction of a heavy-truck access road the most expensive requirement, at an estimated cost of $1.4 million.

The decision was the culmination of three years of stormy discussion between CalMat and neighbors who feared their community would become the “sand and gravel capital” of North County.

CalMat representatives said the south Poway area is home to one of San Diego County’s few remaining good deposits of minerals used in gravel, cement and asphalt, vital to buildings and roads.

Neighbors of the quarry on Beeler Canyon Road say the noise of crushing rocks, the flying dust and the traffic and pollution of gravel trucks will only increase by allowing the project to expand.

The only negative vote on the council came from Robert Emery, who favored imposing tougher restrictions on the quarry, saying the residents in the area have “suffered long enough” in the operation’s 15 years of existence.

“We can’t and should not allow the city of Poway to be bullied into something the people of Poway do not want,” Emery said.

In 1987, CalMat submitted an application that would have doubled the size of the 83-acre sand- and gravel-mining operation, and introduced an asphalt plant and a plant for processing rocks just pulled from the ground. CalMat also hoped to extend the operation of the quarry until 2020. Its current use permit expires Oct. 17.

The City Council staff, however, recommended allowing the 13.5-acre expansion and no asphalt-making facilities. The council considered more stringent actions in June that would have prohibited any expansion of the project, but, after 5 1/2 hours of public testimony and discussion, could not reach a decision.

The council was bound by its own environmental impact report of 1985 requiring that aggregate minerals continue to be mined from the quarry to supply construction materials in the Poway area, in order to avoid trucking through the materials from elsewhere.

Residents of Beeler Canyon and Creek roads complain that trucks travel the narrow roads at high speed outside the hours stipulated by the company’s permit. Only recently did the quarry come into compliance with the current permit’s requirement that it pave roads and fence the property.

CalMat District Manager Robert Imler said the 83-acre site is a “relatively small operation” compared to their three other mining and asphalt facilities in Pala, Mission Valley and Carroll Canyon.

“Our next step is to analyze where we are at and make sure we fully understand the staff’s recommendation,” Imler said after the council meeting.

Meanwhile, CalMat persisted Tuesday in its request that the full 166-acre permit be granted along with an asphalt plant.

Company officials argued that, without the larger expansion, the quarry would not be economically feasible given the new conditions the council was about to apply.

“We believe that this is the best way for all concerned to carry out what has to happen and what should happen,” William Shwartz, a legal counsel for CalMat, told the council.

An hourlong presentation by CalMat representatives outlining the financial unfeasibility of the staff recommendation failed to persuade council members, however.

“I don’t think that the case has been made that it would be economically unfeasible to continue with the aggregate processing,” Councilman Jan Goldsmith said.

City Atty. Stephen Eckis told the council that he had insufficient data to determine whether the council’s conditions made the mining unworkable, but that it is CalMat’s responsibility to prove the unfeasibility.

A feasibility study will take from three to five months, Imler said, after which--if the council conditions are determined to be unworkable--CalMat may return to the council to request that either the conditions of the permit be reduced or the size of the project expanded.

“We feel that (our proposal) is the best project in terms of the environment and our ability to reclaim the land as we had promised the neighbors, as well as the overall economy of the operation,” Imler said before the meeting.