Mining Permit Denied

The county Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to reject a concrete company’s plans for a huge sand and gravel mine in the Santa Clarita area.

The supervisors turned down Transit Mixed Concrete’s appeal of a county Regional Planning Commission decision that denied the company a mining permit. The 460-acre Soledad Canyon project has been debated for years and is the subject of several lawsuits.

Supervisor Michael Antonovich, whose district includes Santa Clarita, led the opposition Tuesday. He said Transit Mixed Concrete did not provide enough information about truck traffic the mine would generate.

Company officials said they did address the traffic concerns and had agreed to reduce the number of truck trips during rush hour.

Tuesday’s vote was cheered by about 200 Santa Clarita residents, many wearing T-shirts and buttons protesting the mine. Most of the opponents arrived at the downtown hearing on buses chartered by the city of Santa Clarita.

Transit Mixed, owned by Mexico-based mining giant Cemex, has federal approval to extract 78 million tons of material from federal land east of the Antelope Valley Freeway. It would be the largest gravel mine in the nation.

Critics say the mine would damage air quality, deplete water resources and endanger wildlife along the Santa Clara River. Transit Mixed officials say the mine would not harm the environment, and is needed to meet the demands of the local building industry.

In January, the company filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court that seeks to force the county to issue the mining permit, which the planning commission denied in August 2000. The suit accuses the county of deliberately delaying the project.