EDITORIAL: Quarry Blues

The ongoing issue of gravel trucks in Forestville is slowly
coming to a head, with the latest vote last week by the county
Planning Commission
There is no question that the recently approved expansion of the
Canyon Rock Quarry and the proposed expansion of the Blue Rock
Quarry will have dramatic impacts on the residents of the small
community, not to mention the traffic impacts on businesses and
visitors and the overall decline in the quality of life.
The possibility of up to 1,000 gravel trucks per day traveling
through Forestville from the two quarries is a staggering concept.
While the two rock quarries may never reach that peak, the number
serves as a reminder that the expansion of the mining operations
could have a tremendous effect on the face of Forestville.
The county Planning Commission will not have the final word on
the matter. The final environmental impact report and expansion
plan will go to the Board of Supervisors in late September or
October and we can expect that the debate that has followed this
project, and the previous one, will continue at the same pitch.
When county leaders decided more than a decade ago to shift rock
and gravel extraction from Russian River gravel mining into hard
rock quarries, they might have anticipated that local impacts would
stir controversy and opposition. But did anyone expect that the
burden of the expanded hard-rock operations would fall so heavily
on a single community?
The permitting process for quarries has been slow and arduous
since the Aggregate Resources Management Plan pointed gravel mining
away from the River, and it just happens that the Canyon and Blue
Rock applications are the first to be reviewed. The fact that the
two quarries are right across the road from each other and send
their trucks through the heart of Forestville is a dilemma for the
Board of Supervisors ‹ and a potential disaster for the town.
We believe supervisors must forge a compromise, one that
includes mitigation measures that will somehow soften the impacts
of the increased truck traffic and adequately address the
environmental impacts that increased mining will have on Green
Valley Creek.
The long-awaited bypass has been discussed, as an alternative
route for gravel trucks and the feasibility of building it in the
near future must be considered. It is a costly project, but so is
the prospect of a dramatic increase in truck traffic through the
middle of Forestville.
Hard rock and gravel are necessary products and mining them
creates impacts. Those impacts must be adequately mitigated and the
residents of Forestville, and the integrity of their community and
the environment, must be respected.
‹ Barry W. Dugan