Gravel Mine Is Necessary

Judging from the emotional rhetoric used in Santa Clarita’s $1.2-million stop-the-mine campaign, you would think the issue before the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday is whether to open a uranium mine on a school playground.

Actually, Santa Clarita officials and residents want supervisors to deny a permit for a sand and gravel mine on unincorporated county land zoned for mining in an area that is already used for mining and has been for 30 years. The project has been approved by the federal government, which owns the surface mining rights, after a 10-year review process.

The proposed Transit Mixed Concrete Co. mine is outside the Santa Clarita city limits. Drive the stretch of the Antelope Valley Freeway that abuts the Soledad Canyon site and you’ll see industry, not houses or schools. The mine site is a mile from the nearest housing development, which itself overlooks the freeway and another gravel pit.

In other words, the rhetoric does not quite match the reality.

Yes, the mine would be larger than others in the area, although no larger than others in the county. Yes, there would be more trucks--24 hours a day, in part to limit the impact on rush-hour traffic. And yes, particulate and diesel emissions are a concern and must be carefully monitored.

But a report by Dr. Henry Gong Jr., professor of medicine at USC and an expert on respiratory diseases, predicts minimal if any health effects from the project because of the site’s distance from development and because of mitigation measures required by the federal Bureau of Land Management when it granted Transit Mixed Concrete a permit.

Sand and gravel, or aggregate, are used to make concrete and go into the construction of everything from houses to roads. A regional retail center requires 100,000 tons of aggregate; each mile of a four-lane urban freeway uses 400,000 tons. The average 1,500-square-foot home requires 328 tons of aggregate, of which 35% is used for the structure and the remainder for roads, sidewalks and other infrastructure.

At $297,000, the median-priced home in affluent Santa Clarita is larger than 1,500 feet; this rapidly growing city needs aggregate as much or more than any place. But officials maintain that the Santa Clarita Valley’s needs are met by the mines already in production along the Antelope Valley Freeway. They say it’s not fair that they should have to provide aggregate for the San Fernando Valley as well.

County supervisors do have to worry about the San Fernando Valley. They have to look at the needs of the region.

The California Division of Mines and Geology, which designated Soledad Canyon a regionally significant construction aggregate resource, says that supplies of aggregate from mines in Sun Valley and in the San Gabriel Valley are dwindling.

Trucking in gravel from farther away would add to the costs of construction. A report prepared for the mining company by Marlon G. Boarnet, associate professor of urban and regional planning and economics at UC Irvine, estimated public works costs to the cash-strapped county alone would increase by $400 million.

The reality is that such necessities of urban life as gravel mines have to go somewhere, and Soledad Canyon has been identified as one of those places.

The Board of Supervisors can call for additional mitigation measures and should do so if that would address legitimate concerns of the mine’s nearest neighbors. But alarmist predictions should not be allowed to drown out the county planning department staff report that the mine is consistent with prior and existing operations and meets zoning and area plan standards--and that Los Angeles County needs the sand and gravel.

Santa Clarita officials and residents want supervisors to deny a permit for a sand and gravel mine on unincorporated county land zoned for mining in an area that is already used for mining and has been for 30 years.