Borough bans gravel mining in water table

PALMER — A long-awaited action on a moratorium on gravel mining into the water table came at the Mat-Su Borough Assembly meeting Tuesday — the ban on such operations will remain unchanged.

The ban applies to the type of gravel mining that occurs below the water table, requiring dredges to pull up more rocks for sale. Operations mining below the water table before the moratorium went into effect have, on the whole, exercised grandfather rights to continue dredging.

An ordinance to ban mining into the water table first came to the Assembly in April, drawing a huge turnout. Gravel industry representatives testified it was unnecessary and harmful to an important Valley industry. Proponents argued that mining in the water table endangered nearby water wells and was much too risky.

That meeting ended with the Assembly asking the industry to come back with a substitute ordinance. As a gesture of their commitment to work with industry, the Assembly inserted a sunset clause into the ordinance that halted dredging. Under that clause, the ban would have expired next month.

Tuesday, a smaller but no less vocal crowd of dredging proponents and opponents returned to the chambers with much the same sentiment.

For their part, the gravel industry mainly asked Tuesday for six more months to come up with a substitute ordinance. The six months that elapsed between the last meeting and Tuesday produced a version of an ordinance that borough staff recommended the assembly reject. Industry representatives said a much better alternative could be drawn up with more time.

“That’s all we’re asking for, is just a chance to have a fair open process,” said Wes Vander Martin with Alaska Sand and Gravel.

Tom Healy, former city manager of Palmer and current executive director of Alaska Rock Products Association — an industry group formed to come up with an alternate ordinance — pointed out that dredging could result in a fivefold increase in a pit’s usefulness. Dredging, he said, keeps gravel operations consolidated. Stopping it, he said, might cause pits to proliferate across the Valley.

“There is going to be a demand for gravel products as long as there is development,” Healy said.

On the other side, Mimi Peabody, representing Friends of Mat-Su, argued that gravel mines have the potential to pollute or drain aquifers and offered a catchphrase used at the previous meeting.

“We really believe that clean, abundant water is more valuable in this state than clean abundant gravel,” Peabody said.

When it came time to make a decision, though, the assembly decided to reinstate the ban — this time with no sunset clause — ahead of the sunsetting of the old ordinance. But voices around the table were thoroughly split as to why.

Each vote in favor of the ban came for a different reason and none seemed to think that Tuesday’s vote would be the final word on dredging.

Assemblywoman Michelle Church argued the ban should remain in place until the industry finds a way to fund additional borough staff to take the burden off the planning department as it works toward a new ordinance. The planning department, she said, has much more important work to do and not enough time to spare for such an ordinance.

Assemblyman Tom Kluberton said he worried about what happens to gravel pits after they’re mined out. A 4-foot separation from the water table as provided for in the current ordinance, he said, isn’t much protection in such a permeable material as gravel. He said he wanted to see more done on rules and regulations for eventual reclamation of pits — some of which are up to a square mile in size — once the pit moves on.

“What will become of this mile-square wasteland when the gravelers leave?” Kluberton asked. Later, he put it more plainly: “I’m worried that without reclamation, gravel’s a menace.”

Assemblywoman Mary Kvalheim, for her part, pointed out that the industry already had six months and questioned whether six more would do any good.

Pete Houston, the fourth vote in opposition to extending the sunset clause, pointed out that, from his view, the sunset clause wasn’t an incentive for the industry to negotiate, since if the ban expired dredging would be allowed to resume.

On the other side of the table, Assemblywomen Cindy Bettine and Lynne Woods favored extending the sunset clause.

Woods, for her part, said she felt the industry had made a good faith effort this go-round and deserved more time to work on a substitute ordinance.

Bettine said she favored extending the sunset clause because, “It gives the industry a deadline to respond to the discussion that we’ve had here tonight.”

Later, in response to the concerns of Kluberton and Church, she pointed out that what her colleagues now wanted to see in the ordinance hadn’t been asked of the industry at the April meeting.

“That’s not fair — to say I’m not going to vote [to extend] because now I want this,” Bettine said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiers-man.com or 352-2270.