By Warren Cornwall
Herald Writer
The future of mining in much of Snohomish County is now being shaped.
A new study maps out 160,000 acres where the county will allow mining, and also suggests regulatory hurdles miners will have to clear before they can start digging.
The final results of the study, now in draft form, could have important ramifications for communities such as Granite Falls, Arlington, Monroe, Sultan and Gold Bar, which lie near high-quality mineral deposits.
The county will ask the public what it thinks of the plan at a series of meetings next week.
For years, local mining operations, most of them gravel pits, have provoked a strong response from neighbors due to noise, pollution and truck traffic. In August, the state delayed selling mining rights for a gravel pit northeast of Sultan after nearby residents protested.
The new study has drawn praise from some as a way to bring a long-term vision to what’s now haphazard oversight by the county.
"Snohomish County has really gone above and beyond the call of duty, in my mind," said Robin Hansen, an official with the mining company Cadman Inc. who sat on a citizen task force overseeing the study.
But some cities and activists say the proposal doesn’t do enough to monitor traffic problems and the sum of future environmental impacts from mining.
"For an effort that is supposed to be doing comprehensive planning, that failure to grapple with cumulative impacts on an area-wide basis is really a fatal flaw," said Peg Ferm, who lives near a Cadman-run quarry south of Monroe and who also sat on the task force.
The report maps out commercially valuable mineral deposits in much of the county and recommends ways the county can regulate mining and other development on the land. The environmental report is designed to guide the county’s development of more detailed regulations for the land.
Now, there are few areas declared strictly off-limits to mining outside cities, said Robert Hilgenberg, a county senior planner working on the project.
"There’s no guiding map like this now," he said.
Four different ways to regulate the land are suggested in the report:
Hansen favors the land-use approach. Most of the tensions between residents and mines have arisen from disputes about whether mining is appropriate in a particular place, or how it affects communities, she said.
"Land-use issues have definitely been the biggest challenge," she said.
Environmental impacts would still be covered, because individual mining operations have to undergo scrutiny before permits are issued, she said.
The report’s author, the consulting firm Huckell/Weinman Associates, also gave the nod to the land-use method because it has proved to be a strong way to protect surrounding lands, the authors said. The environmental model, when plugged into a computer program, resulted in lower protections, the consultants found.
But Ferm said neither method does enough to examine the collective impacts of adding several mining operations to an area. Each project would still be considered without looking at whether adding its impacts to existing mining activities could overload an area’s environment or roads, she said.
"They don’t look at ‘What if we wind up with 40 more mines in this area,’" she said.
Others have echoed Ferm’s concerns. In a draft letter to the county, Gold Bar Mayor Ken Foster called for the county to redo the study and look more closely at mining’s affect on traffic, water and wildlife.
Gold Bar, he said, is already dealing with life near two mining operations.
"As far as I’m concerned, we’ve done our share," he said.
The county and consultants considered adding transportation impacts to the mix, but they and the task force couldn’t settle on a useful way to measure such impacts, Hilgenberg said. Though important, it may need to be addressed more in future regulations after this study is completed, he said.
Ferm acknowledged that the task force struggled to come up with a way to gauge traffic that would fit into the computer models used to determine protection levels for different areas. But that shouldn’t keep the county from finding a way to do it, she said.
"I guess my answer would be, ‘It’s a problem, and coming up with a solution is your job, and what do you think we pay you all this money for?’ " she said.
You can call Herald Writer Warren Cornwall at 425-339-3463 or send e-mail to cornwall@heraldnet.com.
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