Gears grinding down on borough gravel solution

The Frontiersman is probably more aware than most how slowly the wheels of government turn.

But even we are somewhat taken aback at how long it has taken to put together a permanent solution for gravel mining in the Mat-Su Borough. We passed the two-year mark back in April, and the three-year mark is fast approaching.

We were there in April 2008 when the borough assembly first decided it would no longer allow new dredging operations. Dredging is used when a gravel pit becomes deep enough to have entered the water table and make a pond. Gravel is then extracted from the bottom of that pond.

The worry then, as it is now, is that the water table is kind of hard to predict. Disturbing it like that could cause nearby wells to go dry or allow pollutants into previously pristine drinking water.

It’s a serious safety concern in a place like the Valley, where most homes draw water from private wells.

By the same token, gravel needs to be mined locally. Importing it across great distances simply doesn’t make fiscal sense. Eliminating all dredging will only serve to spread mining out, with multiple shallow pits needed to provide the same amount of gravel normally obtained from one deeper pit.

There’s a lot to consider here and we don’t think this sort of thing should be rushed.

But the thing about that somewhat hastily drafted moratorium in 2008 is it was supposed to be a temporary solution. The idea was that borough staff would get together with the gravel industry and piece together some kind of a compromise. They were asked to come back in six months.

We were surprised when that first permanent solution was proposed and the assembly, instead of approving it, asked for things in the plan it hadn’t sought previously, like standards for how to reclaim decommissioned mines. So the working group went back to the drawing board.

The most recent fix to come to the assembly was tabled last week by unanimous consent. The reasoning this time was that the regulations were too onerous and restrictive. If that is true, the industry likely was happy to see the ordinance die, but we have a hard time believing that two years of waiting has left the gravel miners in any way happy.

There are numerous reasons why regulations shouldn’t take this long to pass. It looks bad when an assembly tells an industry to come back in six months for a permanent fix and winds up kicking the can down the road for two more years.

Also, a lot can happen in two years. Of the current assembly, only Cindy Bettine was there when the gravel moratorium was passed. A new mayor has come and gone, and the manager has departed.

It’s not hard to see how so many changes in leadership could quickly muddle pending ordinances.

In some ways, that’s just part of the messy process we call democracy, but it’s not supposed to be this messy. The assembly says it will work on targeted changes to code that will constitute a permanent solution for the borough’s gravel extraction. We hope, though we have little reason to, that the next time it comes up for a vote will be its last.

It will be a move that’s long overdue.