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Quarry decision stirs up another lawsuit

Brian Wilkinson

(Updated: Thursday, July 29, 2010, 12:00 AM)

Suit claims EIR does not comply with state law

A group representing more than 75 families who live around the area Madera County Supervisors recently approved for a rock quarry have filed a lawsuit to stop its construction.

The group, Bates Station Neighbors, contends that the Madera County Board of Supervisors failed to observe the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act when approving the Coarsegold open-pit hard rock quarry June 15.

The suit was filed July 13 in Madera Superior Court by San Francisco attorneys Winter King and Tamara Galanter of Shute, Mihaly and Weinberger. The suit claims the Revised Environmental Impact Report and Madera County "glosses over the project's environmental impacts ... and fails to acknowledge alternatives and litigation of these impacts including frequent blasting and hundreds of truck trips to and from the site each day."

The suit says the quarry would cause "substantial and irreversible harm to the natural environment" and have "dire impacts on the area's water supply, sensitive wildlife, traffic and rural quality of life for decades to come."

Located near the intersection of Daulton Road (406) and Road 209, west of the 22 Mile House gas station, the proposed quarry would sit on 121 acres and process up to 900,000 tons of aggregate material annually. It has been estimated that 300 round-trip truck loads per day would be needed to transport the material on an average day and 680 loads per day during a maximum workday.

The suit states the approval of the project was inconsistent with the county's general plan and county code. It also said the county dismissed evidence that the project would reduce the value of neighboring properties, and in come cases, make them unsellable.

"The approval was inconsistent with the noise limitations clearly set forth in the county's general plan," said King. "Because the county's land-use decision must be consistent with its general plan under state law, approval of the project was illegal and must be overturned."

This is not the first time the project has been before the courts. The county first approved the project in February 2006 but in Bruce Gray's. Madera County, the court of appeal found the county's original environmental review was inadequate. As a result, the county was ordered to withdraw the approval and correct the deficiencies in the original EIR prior to reapproving the project.

Gray is the current president of the neighborhood organization.

"Unfortunately, the revised EIR did not correct the deficiencies," said King. She said in recent years new information has come to light such as sightings of the endangered California tiger salamander near the site, suggesting the project's impact will be more significant. "The county refused to consider this new information in the revised EIR in violation of the California Environmental Quality Act."

"The neighbors are concerned about everything about this project, but the two most important issues are water and traffic," Gray said. "The Bates Station Neighbors group was established to promote a balance between the economic needs for development in the county and the demands such development places on the environment and the health and safety of the public.

"They have taken all water mitigations out of the EIR and put them into the conditional use permit," Gray said. "This removes them from any CEQA challenge from the public."

Gray said the owner of the project, Jack Baker, has done his share of work to mitigate the road situation, but the county falls short when there is no documented plan for Highway 41.

"Now they want to have 680 heavy trucks per day, 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., merge onto Highway 41 only to run into a two-lane highway at 145," Gray said. "This is due to the lack of planning on the county's part. The county cannot tell us what Highway 41 will look like or when a documented plan for improvement will happen, if ever."

The county must answer the complaint by Aug. 13.

King says the suit does not prevent the developer from moving forward with the project "at his own risk," but she does not think that will happen.