The decades-long battle over the proposed Roblar Road Quarry just got a little more slimy.
The attempts to build a rock quarry on Roblar Road west of Petaluma date back for decades and span generations, and the controversy attending its approval makes the fractious debates over the Regency shopping center and the Dutra asphalt plant look like playground skirmishes in the ongoing battle between the pro-growth/slow-growth militias. So it’s almost absurd to think that the ultimate resolution of this timeworn, convoluted and heavily politicized issue could come down to the fate of a six-inch amphibian with cute, buggy eyes that spends most of its life underground.
The California tiger salamander, an endangered species, happens to live on the site of the proposed quarry. So when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced last June that it intended to add nearly 5,000 acres of prime Sonoma County land to the designated protection zone for the species, some of which overlaps the quarry boundaries, the issue of whether to proceed with the quarry’s development became even more complicated. The announcement seemed to catch many people by surprise. When contacted by The Press Democrat, John Barella, the quarry’s developer, said he was unaware of the plan to add the extra land in the Roblar Road area to the habitat zone. “First I’ve heard of it,” he was quoted as saying in the June 20 edition.
Last December, the Board of Supervisors approved the quarry project on a 3-2 vote, sidestepping the protests of local residents, environmental groups, farmers, ranchers, bloggers and activists. The vote came after more than three hours of public testimony, including a mano-a-mano altercation where a strident quarry opponent punched a biologist in the shoulder and was subsequently removed from the proceedings by a sheriff’s deputy. In a separate vote, the supervisors (acting in their capacity as directors of the Open Space District) found that mitigation of the tiger salamander, as well as its amphibious cousin, the red-legged frog, was consistent with the district’s conservation easement on neighboring land, which protects its historical grazing and natural resource values.
According to published news reports, the deal could save Barella $5 to 15 million, because he wouldn’t have to purchase new land or buy more costly habitat credits. (Barella has already agreed to pay up to $80,000 per acre to replace salamander habitat damaged by quarry operations, among other conditions.)
The proposed project would include a 65-acre quarry pit that would operate six days per week for a 20-year period. It’s expected to produce about 11 million cubic yards of construction-grade rock worth about $60 million over at least 20 years. Barella and his supporters also contend that Sonoma County needs a local source of rock for concrete and building materials. The proximity of the quarry to urban areas like Petaluma and Santa Rosa, where the majority of the rock will be used, would eliminate the need to import rock from locations outside the county.
Committed to the good fight
A long list of city, county and federal agencies have queued up to oppose the quarry, including the cities of Petaluma and Cotati, the Community Clean Water Institute, Russian Riverkeeper, the Petaluma River Council, the Sierra Club, the Sonoma County Democratic Committee and Sonoma County Conservation Action. One of the most vocal and well-organized, however, is CARRQ—a group so ambidextrous in its opposition that over the course of time, it changed its name from Citizens Against Roblar Rock Quarry to Citizens Advocating for Roblar Rural Quality—a move that enabled it to keep the same catchy acronym while simultaneously broadening its promotion of more responsible land use in the North Bay.
“Our position has always been that there are many environmental concerns that haven’t been addressed regarding this quarry project,” says Sue Buxton, president of CARRQ, a nonprofit comprised of roughly 200 local residents. “Our biggest concern continues to be the unlined, uncapped, county-owned landfill next to the proposed quarry site. The groundwater under this landfill hasn’t been adequately characterized, and the county refuses to do it or to let the quarry applicant do it. Instead, they’re relying on a computer model that concludes the landfill won’t leak into the water supply when they blast the hillside away. I don’t believe the computer model. I want to know exactly what’s in the landfill that could contaminate my water, and I want the county to test it.”
The group congealed in the late 1980s when concerned citizens from Roblar and Mecham roads, many of whom had children at Dunham School, came together to contest a proposed gravel mine on Roblar Road. Political novices, they nevertheless successfully defeated proposals for two separate quarry projects. Although their children are now in college, many of the same members remain committed to fighting against quarry development.
Their arguments are simple, straightforward and compelling—and, until recently, only indirectly related to the tiger salamander. From their perspective, the work crews that blast into the quarry would disturb toxins in the adjacent landfill, thereby leaching harmful gremlins into an already-fragile underground aquifer, producing permanent and irreparable contamination. They also point to the increased truck traffic on Roblar Road, where residents face enough trouble already navigating the narrow, winding, two-lane blacktop.
The quarry quashers have been supported by several third parties with at least some degree of objectivity and nothing to gain financially.
On December 15, 2009, the California State Regional Water Quality Control Board said in a letter to the county that it “remains concerned that potential water quality impacts associated with the mining up against an unlined landfill aren’t adequately addressed in project studies so far.” In the same letter, the board went on to say that the county could be held liable for pollution caused by the mining. “Should the county of Sonoma choose to move forward with this project as defined in the FEIR [Final Environmental Impact Report], it should be noted that the Regional Water Quality Control Board could find the project proponent and the Sonoma County Department of Transportation and Public Works responsible for the discharge of waste to the waters of the state.”
Casting a tiny shadow
The Roblar Road quarry was being intensely debated long before the Sonoma County line of the tiger salamander family received its endangered species status in 2005. These large, secretive amphibians can grow to a length of seven or eight inches and can live up to 15 years. They have stocky bodies, rounded snouts, long tails and brown, protruding eyes with black pupils. Finicky eaters, they subsist on earthworms, snails and insects. And while adults are almost entirely terrestrial and usually only return to the water to breed, they’re excellent swimmers.
Although they’re not exactly common in Northern California, tiger salamanders can be occasionally glimpsed in the North Bay near ponds, streams and fishless pools. Despite their low profile, they’ve cast their tiny shadow over another high-profile business enterprise, this one striking at the very infrastructure of the county.
In the August 2011 issue of this publication, John Bly, executive vice president of the Engineering Contractors Association and past president of the North Coast Builders Exchange, described how protection of the tiger salamander—and the concomitant expansion of its habitat—could potentially disrupt the work of widening Highway 101, creating a ripple effect through the local economy [“California Business or the Tiger Salamander—Which Is the Real Endangered Species?” Readers Speak Out, Aug. 2011].
According to Bly, Ghilotti Construction, the low bidder on the project that will ultimately expand 101 to four lanes between Cotati and Penngrove, is ready to rock n’ roll but has been waiting for months for Caltrans to apply for an “incidental take permit” in case one of the tiger salamanders is killed during construction—as mandated by the California Endangered Species Act. The problem is that Caltrans may not have enough money in its budget for the mitigation efforts required by the act. The delay means no paychecks for the Ghilotti crews, no ancillary dollars spent at local businesses and blunted tax revenues.
“In the North Bay, we have a beautiful environment that we want to protect, and we’ve heaped regulation upon regulation onto businesses to do so,” Bly wrote. “The result is that we’ve protected the environment but not the business environment—and you must have both. You must have balance. Our economy needs projects like these to keep growing.”
Bly attended the Fish and Wildlife Service hearings in which the proposal to add 5,000 acres to the tiger salamander protection zone were publicly discussed. “Most of the comments I heard were, ‘How are the [tiger salamanders] doing now that we have all this awareness about the species?’ … and the answer was they’re doing a lot better, which led to the question, ‘If they’re doing a lot better, do we even need the critical habitat designation now?’ You have a lot of land protected, and listening to the Fish and Wildlife officials, it seems like things are working. If you want to talk about the liner in the landfill, that’s another issue—or how they’re going to mine the rock, or what the impact will be on traffic—but as far as the impact on the tiger salamander, I think that’s covered.”
Judicial interpretation
What usually happens in a case like this, where grand forces of nature, commerce and politics collide, is happening right now: Lawyers are making a lot of money. As the tiger salamanders in western Sonoma County go about their business, likely not realizing their habitat has grown even as their numbers have shrunk, oblivious to the permitting process, the legal wranglings and the environmental analyses, the battle has moved beyond the Roblar Road to the stuffy confines of a courtroom in Santa Rosa.
After the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors approved the quarry project late last year, CARRQ filed a lawsuit based on the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) directly challenging the quarry approvals and the environmental impact report. The group then filed a second suit, along with easement holders Joe and Kathy Tresch and Ken and Nancy Mazetta, asserting CEQA should apply to the county’s decision to allow tiger salamander mitigation on already preserved open space. In CARRQ’s view, the deal the county made tampers with land conservation agreements meant to be permanent and risks undermining public support for the county’s 20-year-old, voter-approved and taxpayer-supported Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District.
“We continue to be concerned that there are environmental risks from this project, and we don’t feel the environmental impact report has adequately addressed them,” Buxton says.
In the last week of July, Judge Elliot Lee Daum dismissed the lawsuit challenging the county’s Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District’s interpretation of the easement issue. Daum found that the quarry could peacefully and productively coexist with the tiger salamander and other endangered species, stating in his 26-page ruling that there were many options for mitigating the impacts on the critters, including privately endowed preserves and protection of those species on adjacent lands.
“While we believe it’s indisputable that all these things can and should peacefully coexist, the neighbors of the quarry project have been intractable in their opposition,” says Steve Butler, Barella’s attorney, with Santa Rosa’s Clement, Fitzpatrick & Kenworthy. “After they filed the lawsuits challenging the quarry project approvals, we tried but were unable to settle the litigation. It seems that the quarry opponents are not genuinely interested in mitigation measures addressing real environmental concerns or species conservation but want only to stop the quarry and set aside the county’s existing legal approvals granted last December.”
In Butler’s view, the suit against the Open Space District’s interpretation of the conservation easement was especially egregious in its shortsightedness. “The quarry opponents’ obstructionist stance could have hurt farmers in a very direct way,” he says. “With the federal government’s recent actions to expand the tiger salamander habitat designation, the very ranchers who sought to restrict or eliminate their own property rights under the conservation easement to conduct species preservation on their property might very well need those property rights someday to mitigate on their own land for tiger salamander impacts of future expanded agricultural operations. For example, if they want to upgrade from grazing to planting orchards or vineyards in the future, those operations may have impacts on the tiger salamander habitat requiring mitigation.
“In their zeal to preclude the Open Space District from cooperating to accommodate land uses deemed positive and acceptable by the county and federal agencies, [the opponents] probably never thought of that consequence. While we’re gratified that their action has been dismissed by the court, we find it ironic that the petitioners thought they were taking aim at the quarry project when they were really pointing the gun at their own feet in attempting to significantly hinder environmental protection in the manner they did.”
Protecting property rights
Despite the dismissal of one of their three lawsuits, the announcement to expand the tiger salamander protection zone by the Fish and Wildlife Service seemed to bode good tidings for CARRQ and other quarry opponents. After all, if the expansion is approved, Barella could be faced with additional requirements to develop the project, not to mention additional costs. But insiders say the new habitat designation “wouldn’t make that much difference” to Barella’s plans for development.
“While it seems like it would help us to extend the tiger salamander protection, it doesn’t really change anything for the quarry proposal,” Buxton says. “The tiger salamander is a protected species, and since they found it on the property, it’s protected whether it’s in the boundaries of [the quarry] or not.”
Buxton pointed out that CARRQ had contacted the Fish and Wildlife Service about five years ago to tell them neighbors had seen tiger salamanders on the property of the proposed quarry. “At that time, Fish and Wildlife told us the tiger salamander was only in the flatlands, not in the hills,” she says. “Fortunately, testing proved they do exist in the hills.”
From Buxton’s perspective, the tiger salamander is just one of the species that live on the proposed quarry site that could be at risk. “It’s a beautiful piece of property in an area that the county has designated a scenic corridor,” says Buxton, whose own home is within a few hundred feet of the site. “Finding the tiger salamander wasn’t news to us, just to the feds. With all we know, we don’t see the environmental or economic justification to put a quarry in this site.”
Quarry supporters, on the other hand, maintain that the project’s environmental safeguards are more than adequate to prevent any damage to the water table or the air quality of the region. They’ve backed up those claims with nearly 50 pages of mitigation measures intended to reduce the impact on the environment, the roads and our friendly neighborhood tiger salamanders. And because of the risks to water sources, Barella has been required to indemnify the county and several cities that once used the landfill from any legal claims that could stem from a pollution leak caused by the quarry. The indemnification deal would provide a $7.5 million insurance policy to cover legal claims and cleanup costs.
“We think preserving farmers’ property rights and a wider range of options to achieve state and federally mandated rare and endangered species mitigation and protection goals can only benefit cash-strapped state and local government agencies in carrying out their essential projects and functions,” Butler says. “When all is said and done, we feel certain that the county will also successfully defend the remaining litigation challenging its quarry approvals and environmental review, and that the quarry project will go forward.”
Timeline
1986 Developers (unsuccessfully) try to build a gravel mine off Roblar Road in west Sonoma County next to the old Sonoma County dump.
1992 Local residents force the developers to withdraw the quarry from consideration.
2003 Current developer John Barella buys the site (along with about 750 acres of surrounding land) and files a new application to mine gravel there.
2004 Sonoma County pays Barella $2.3 million to stop further development. After making the deal, the county dedicates the land as preserved agricultural open space.
2008 Barella’s lawyers ask the county for an easement that would let him transport gravel through the same land that’s already been designated as a preserve.
2009 After an environmental study (paid for by Barella), the county staff recommends approval of the mining and trucking plan.
2010 The County Planning Commission agrees and the Board of Supervisors approves the quarry project 3-2.
2011 CARRQ and other parties file two lawsuits to stop the quarry project.
