Thursday, May 27, 2004
By Jennifer Latson, jlatson@chronline.com
MAYTOWN Thurston County officials have changed their minds again about the environmental impact of a proposed gravel quarry near Millersylvania State Park.
If approved, the 280-acre mine would be the county's biggest, according to a county official. The next-biggest mine, just down the road from the one proposed, is a third smaller.
Concerns from neighbors and the comments of a ground water scientist have made the county rethink its stance on the project: The planning department announced Tuesday it will now require an environmental impact statement.
That wasn't the case when the project entered its public comment period at the end of March, when the county determined the quarry — with certain conditions in place — would not have any significant effect on the surrounding environment.
Neighbors, environmental groups and state agencies disagreed. Their comments prompted a revision of the county's assessment, which was reissued in early May with stricter conditions.
That document drew even more public comments than the earlier statement, including some from a hydrogeologist, a scientist who studies water below the Earth's surface.
"The Black Hills Audubon Society had a very well qualified hydrogeologist review (the proposal)," said Thurston County Environmental Health Specialist Bob Mead, a licensed hydrogeologist himself.
"They raised some aspects that weren't answered" in the initial reports describing the project's impact, Mead said. "Some of them had not been discussed or evaluated with the kind of detail we needed for a project of this magnitude." Those issues had to do with how much the water levels in wetlands and wells nearby would be affected by gravel mining, Mead said.
Thurston County planner Tony Kantas said the questions raised by the independent hydrogeologist, a former University of Washington professor, was what motivated the planning department to withdraw its "mitigated determination of nonsignificance" and issue a "determination of significance" instead.
"It kind of gave us second thoughts," Kantas said. "We can't issue an MDNS unless we are absolutely positive there will be no substantial environmental impacts." "Before this, all the hydrologists we talked to agreed with the Citifor report," Kantas added.
The quarry is being planned by J. Allen, a real estate consultant working for Citifor Inc., which owns the land. The county's initial determination was based on a report prepared by consultants, including a hydrologist, hired by Allen.
That report indicated there would be a change in ground water level as a result of the mining — which would take place below the water table and leave behind eight lakes, 5 to 49 acres wide and 40 to 100 feet deep — but the wetlands and neighboring wells would not be affected because measures such as lining the edges of the lakes with silt would raise water levels back to what they were.
Mead said although that's true theoretically, practically it may be harder to ensure.
"This approach is well supported by technical theory, but we haven't been able to locate anywhere where this has been done to this degree on a gravel mining project," said the environmental health officer. "There's an element of experimentation there we need to have more information about. Like, this all looks fine in theory, but what if five or 10 years down the road this just isn't working?" The hydrogeologist who submitted comments suggested a couple of ways water levels might be affected, Mead said.
"The water loss due to evaporation from the big lake will cause the water tables to drop," Mead said. "The mere fact they're taking water out of the aquifers means water's going to flow out of that valley faster." Even if the lining solution does lessen the effect on the wetlands right next to the mine, it can't keep water levels up further from the lakes, Mead said.
"We can protect the water levels in the wetlands, but the effect of that water loss is going to be felt somewhere," he said. "You can shift the effects of the water loss, but you can't make them go away entirely." Mead said the water loss would likely be noticed to the northwest of the proposed quarry.
"It looks like at this point, if they went ahead with what they have planned, the effect would show up mainly in Allen Creek, to the northwest, which is also an area where there are very shallow wells," he said.
Neighbors of the Tilley Road quarry site, more than a dozen of whom jointly submitted an appeal of the project Monday, listed ground water levels as one of their main concerns.
In the appeal, the Maytown residents said they all rely on wells for drinking water and were worried the wells could run dry.
Laurie Batten, who spearheaded the community opposition, said Kantas told her Tuesday the appeal was invalid now that the MDNS has been withdrawn — but that's good news.
"Now we've got some more time, because we've just been scrambling," said Batten, who was angry when the county announced the first MDNS in March and gave residents two weeks from the announcement date to comment on the plan.
"We're pretty confident that an environmental impact statement will show that it will have a significant impact on our water table and our wells," she added. "We're not looking on this as a victory, because it's not over yet." Allen, the project's proponent, said he didn't understand why the county was requiring an environmental impact statement.
"We find it highly unusual that that jurisdiction would issue an MDNS, reissue it, then revoke it and issue a determination of significance," said the real estate consultant. "I've never seen it done in my 20 years doing business in the state of Washington, but if that's the process Thurston County is requiring us to go through, we'll go through it." Still, he said, he didn't think it was necessary.
"The long and short is, our proposal will stand on its merits, and if we have to provide more information, we will," Allen said. "We provided a very complete application, and Thurston County has reviewed that application and has made several determinations." It is very rare for the county to withdraw a determination of nonsignificance and require an EIS for a project, according to Thurston County planner Cynthia Wilson, who estimated that fewer than 5 percent of the applications that come before planners for review undergo such a reversal.
"It has happened before, but it doesn't happen frequently," Wilson said. "Usually it's the result of comments we get during the SEPA (State Environmental Policy Act) process." County workers will now work with Allen to select an independent consultant, paid for by Allen's consulting firm, to draft the EIS, which will be different from the MDNS in that it will analyze several alternatives to the proposed quarry project at once.
"You can have an EIS that identifies an issue that's not mitigatible," Wilson said. "That's why you look at alternatives, because a smaller project or a different project may be OK." Although the SEPA process has been more convoluted than usual in this case, Mead said it was an example of a triumph, not a failure, of the system.
"This is the way the system's supposed to work," Mead said. "They issue a determination and then there's a 10-day public comment period. The fact that they're revising it shows the county did listen." Allen could not give such an endorsement.
"How they decide to interpret SEPA is up to them," Allen said of the county planning department. "All we can do is provide the information we're asked to provide."
Jennifer Latson covers rural Lewis County, South Thurston County and East Grays Harbor County for The Chronicle. She may be reached at 807-8245, or by e-mail at jlatson@chronline.com.
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