Gravel pit ordinance passes over objections

PALMER — The Mat-Su Borough Assembly has closed a door but opened a window for gravel pits in the Borough that may want to dig gravel from below the water table.

No new gravel dredging operations below the water table will be allowed, the assembly decided Tuesday, but the ordinance forbidding them will expire Oct. 21.

“It is very important, I think, that we show good faith, that we are working with this group,” said Assemblywoman Cindy Bettine, who proposed the successful motion to attach a sunset clause to the ordinance. The passage of the ordinance does not set the law in stone, and gravel pit operators can still come before the assembly and get the regulations changed.

The sunset clause sets a deadline for when that should happen, Bettine said.

Wes Vander Martin, general manager of Alaska Sand and Gravel, said after the decision that the Borough’s action wasn’t much of a surprise and that his company intends to work on a possible substitute ordinance to the one the Borough passed.

“We want to be part of a solution,” Vander Martin said.

AS&G has operated a pit in the Valley since the 1970s, digging below the limit the Borough set Tuesday for some time.

Emerson Kruger, the Borough planner who drafted the gravel pit ordinance, said gravel pits digging into the water table could potentially drain underwater aquifers, causing wells to go dry at nearby homes. There is also potential for water to flood into nearby water bodies or send dirt into water wells, rendering the water undrinkable.

The Borough has pointed to one instance where a breach raised the level of Canoe Lake, flooded out a septic tank and dirtied an irrigation well in Palmer.

Gravel pit operators came out in force to the meeting, filling to overflowing the assembly chambers.

“Mining in the water table is something that’s commonly done throughout the U.S. and it’s done responsibly,” said Trevor Edmondson, Alaska plants manager for Central Paving Products.

He said the incident the Borough referred to, in which his company was alleged to have flooded Canoe Lake, wasn’t his company’s fault. Another lake, a mile away and up-slope from the mine, raised to similar levels.

Edmondson was part of a working group that put together a substitute ordinance the assembly rejected Tuesday. Like every representative of the gravel industry who testified, Edmondson opposed the Borough’s proposed regulations as well as the ordinance that eventually passed.

The working group was not given enough time to come up with a compromise ordinance, he said. The group also grew in size and became unwieldy. A smaller working group with more time on its hands could come up with a decent ordinance that satisfies the industry and concerned citizens in three to six months, Edmondson said.

Chuck Wilkes, another Central Paving Products employee and working group participant, said the first working group had to meet strict deadlines.

“That was a mistake from the start,” Wilkes said. As to the problems the Borough cited, “Hydrologists actually consider gravel mining to be a low-risk operation.”

While gravel pit operators expressed opposition to the Borough’s regulating gravel mining, a number of people testified with the opposite opinion.

“We think the risks are simply too big to allow gravel mining below the high water level,” said Mimi Peabody, representing the Friends of Mat-Su. “Abundant clean drinking water is more valuable than clean, abundant gravel.”

Steve Silverstein, vice president of the Alaska Railroad, said the railroad depends on the gravel industry for a large part of its business. If pits aren’t allowed to go into the water table, the business will shift away from large pits and towards smaller operations and therefore away from the railroad and toward trucks.

“We’re cheaper than trucks, but it has to be from a concentrated source,” Silverstein said.

Asked how much revenue the railroad might lose, Silverstein balked. “It’s kind of hard for me to sit here in front of my customers and tell you what it means in dollars,” he said.

In the end, the assembly voted to approve the ban on mining in the water table but attached the sunset clause, which Bettine described as a compromise.

“Let the industry get together and bring us the proof that they can do it safely,” Assemblywoman Michelle Church said. “Then we can amend it.”

Noting that the ordinance has allowed gravel operators to apply for grandfather rights to dig into the water table — Kruger put the number of applications received so far at above 80 — Assemblyman Tom Kluberton said he supports the ordinance.

“If we pass this thing tonight nobody’s out of business, nobody’s out a job,” he said.

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