Read our original action alert below for more details on the case, or read The Columbian's piece "Clark County rejects plan to reclassify private road leading to gravel mine" here (subscription required).
Take Action Now to Stop Harmful Mining Proposal in Clark County
The mining violators are at it again! Mining company ZP#5, LLC seeks to convert SE 356th Avenue, a privately owned existing road in southeast Clark County, into a publicly owned mining haul road. This is just the latest of many legal battles and threats posed by the owners, operators, and attorneys representing the companies who have owned and operated an illegal gravel mine in the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area.
Please help us stop their latest harmful proposal by exposing it as a Trojan horse loaded with problems, and by urging the Clark County Council to reject the proposed dedication of SE 356th Avenue from a private rural residential road to a public mining haul road.
We need your help to urge Chair Medvigy and Clark County Council members to deny the proposed road dedication. Converting this rural residential road to public ownership would not serve the public interest and offers no benefits. Instead, the proposal would irreparably harm the community, the environment, and the National Scenic Area.
This proposal is not only harmful, but also unprecedented: Clark County has not approved the conversion of a longstanding private road to a public road in at least 20 years. Here, this proposed road dedication is designed solely to benefit a single mining company, and it comes loaded with numerous problems. This proposal is not in the public interest.
Clark County is being asked to assume all liabilities and responsibilities for the proposed mining haul road, including maintenance costs and other expenses, placing an unfair and costly financial burden on taxpayers. Sections of the proposed road are too narrow to serve as public roads. As a result, Clark County would need to invest significant taxpayer dollars to widen, relocate, realign, and/or redesign the road to comply with public road standards and requirements. The county would also be responsible for fixing multiple existing violations within the proposed public right-of-way, including unpermitted drainage ditches and underground utility lines that were previously installed to serve mining at the site—thus saddling the taxpayers with even further costs.?
In 2018, this road gained notoriety for illegal truck traffic hauling gravel in the National Scenic Area, with more than 200 round trips by double-loaded gravel trucks each day. The heavy trucks gouged deep ruts into SE 356th Avenue and other local roads, spilled sediment into local waterways, and terrorized local residents with noisy and dangerous truck traffic. In one scary instance, a mining truck careened down SE 356th Avenue from the site and destroyed the BNSF train tracks, blocking train traffic for twelve hours and starkly highlighting the significant safety risks posed by these trucks.
Mining operations here will worsen salmon habitat in Gibbons Creek and Steigerwald Lake National Wildlife Refuge, compounding previous damage. Photo by Stephen Datnoff.
Truck traffic from mining will also adversely affect the health and safety of residents and hundreds of schoolchildren. And mining operations at this site will further degrade salmon habitat in Gibbons Creek (which passes through the site) and the recently restored Steigerwald Lake National Wildlife Refuge (which is adjacent to the site), repeating harm that already occurred from past mining at this site, which resulted in record-setting fines imposed by the Washington Department of Ecology and Columbia River Gorge Commission.
Additionally, if the proposed road dedication is not rejected outright, the environmental impacts will need to be fully reviewed. An Environmental Impact Statement has already been determined by the Clark County Land Use Hearing Examiner to be necessary in order to review and inform the county and the public about the full scope of the environmental consequences of mining at this site, all of which may ultimately flow from this proposed road dedication.
Clark County is currently accepting written and oral comments on the road dedication proposal. Please urge Chair Medvigy and the Council members to reject this unnecessary, expensive, and harmful proposal. Simply put, road dedication decisions must be in the public interest, and not just for the benefit of special interests like a single mining company.
This site has been the focus of one of Friends’ longest and largest legal struggles. In 2023 alone, Friends achieved victory against the mining violators in 12 out of 12 different court cases, appeals, and contested motions involving this property. Among other decisions in 2023, the Clark County Hearing Examiner denied a land use application for resuming mining on the property, finding the application incomplete under the National Scenic Area rules. However, the battles continue, now disguised as a Trojan horse being offered to Clark County.