Board Extends Hearing on Strip-Mining

Despite nearly five hours of testimony from farmers, business people and blue-collar miners, the Ventura County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday decided to extend a public hearing to discuss whether to allow a massive strip-mining operation outside Fillmore.

The hearing was postponed until today so as many as 50 more people could testify.

Anticipated for months by Southern Pacific Milling Co. executives as well as by ranchers and Fillmore city officials, the lengthy hearing drew more than 300 people to the Hall of Administration on Tuesday afternoon.

But so many people signed up to testify--more than 110 speakers, about evenly split on the proposal--that the Board of Supervisors adjourned the meeting about 6 p.m. and ordered the debate to resume at 8:30 a.m.

At issue is an application by the El Rio-based company to scoop millions of cubic yards of rocky earth out of a 103-acre orchard that the company owns at Sycamore Ranch, a sprawling lemon grove situated between California 126 and Sycamore Road less than two miles from Fillmore.

Company officials say they can strip-mine the property slowly and minimize any environmental damage that might result from the proposed 29-year operation.

“Tests show that trees will grow as good or better after the project,” said Bill Butler, SP Milling operations manager. After the rocks are removed from the dug-up soil, the company would replace the dirt to the orchard.

But nearby ranchers and city officials say that such a huge, messy operation should never be allowed in the greenbelt between Fillmore and Santa Paula, and that the prime farmland will ultimately be destroyed.

“The Fillmore-Santa Paula area is unique,” said Bob Dudley, a third-generation farmer with property about a mile from Sycamore Ranch. “It has a natural beauty unlike any other in Southern California.”

SP Milling pledged to operate no more than 190 days a year and dig only two acres at a time to reduce environmental damage to the area.

The application had already been rejected by the county Planning Commission. But company officials appealed to the supervisors on the grounds that it could ensure no permanent environmental damage would result from their mining.

Three separate parties appealed the commission’s Aug. 15 decision, which bucked a staff recommendation and denied the mining permit.

Commissioners voted 4 to 1 to reject the project. But at the same time, the panel certified as complete a lengthy analysis of the environmental impact of the project.

That ambiguous Planning Commission decision prompted both the city of Fillmore and a citizens group that calls itself Stop Mining in Rural Fillmore to appeal to the board--asking supervisors to decertify the thick environmental review.

SP Milling officials also appealed, requesting that supervisors reject the Planning Commission denial of the permit it needed for digging.

“This site will not be seen, or heard, or have any impact on the city of Fillmore,” SP Milling Vice President Bill Berger told supervisors.

What’s more, Berger said the county needs more gravel to make the concrete that is used for most construction projects.

Without more local mining permits, SP Milling officials argued, gravel will continue to be imported from other counties, further polluting Ventura County skies with smog-spewing dump trucks and raising construction costs in the region.

Berger conceded, however, that the Sycamore Ranch project would generate 144 daily round-trip dump-truck excursions from Fillmore to El Rio, where the company has operated its gravel-processing plant for decades.

Miners, meanwhile, urged the supervisors to allow them to earn a living.

“If I lose my job, where am I going to go?” asked Albert Valenzuela, who said he has worked at SP Milling for 35 years. “I don’t want to go on unemployment.”

But opponents of the project cited a litany of problems they associated with the strip-mining proposal.

They said the mining plan would invade the greenbelt long observed between the cities of Fillmore and Santa Paula. And strip-mining would raise dust, harm farming and drive tourists from the valley.

“The Santa Clara River Valley is a sacred garden,” said Jess Cook, spokesman for Stop Mining in Rural Fillmore. “If you put a strip-mine in the middle of it, you’re going to wipe it out.”

Fillmore Councilwoman Linda Brewster agreed.

“If we want to maintain agriculture, then we’ve got to protect it,” she told supervisors. “A strip-mining operation in an agricultural area is incompatible.”

County Agricultural Commissioner Earl McPhail, who last summer said the SP Milling project would not hurt farmers, said Tuesday that he now opposes the application.

“Our greenbelts are being threatened with new projects all the time,” he said. “The greenbelt has stood for a long time. I would encourage you to continue to honor that greenbelt.”