Mine backers reach out to community

Published 2:54 pm Thursday, October 2, 2008

DUVALL _ The proponents of the Duvall Mine invited the community

to a public meeting to learn more about their proposal, but only about half

a dozen people showed up to the March 23

gathering.

Joe Jackels, the managing partner for Duvall Quarry LLC, along with

a handful of experts, were ready to correct any misconceptions the

community had about the project.

“We wanted to give an opportunity for the people of Duvall to hear

the facts how they are versus what the opponents (Friends of Cherry

Valley) are putting in the newspaper and Web site,” he said.

Jackels contends that the impacts from the 92-acre site, which is

located about two miles north of Duvall, will be minimal to the surrounding

community and can be mitigated, including noise concerns.

At an earlier Friends of Cherry Valley meeting, a person testified

that students at Cherry Valley Elementary would be able to hear the

quarry’s blasting and that it will sound like bombs. However, Jackels said that

the blast wouldn’t be louder than sounds already heard at the school.

“The noise will be equivalent to that of a basketball being bounced

in this auditorium,” he said. “They’ll

hear the blasting for less than five minutes on the average of once a week

and they’ll be warned of the blasting.”

Ioana Park, a noise consultant from BRC Acoustics in Seattle, agrees

that the noise from the blasting should be minimal.

“In an operation like this, the blast is anticlimactic compared to the

crushers and drilling for blasting,” she

said. “One blast can be one decibel above annoyance level but [it wouldn’t]

create physical discomfort or structural damage.”

Park recalled an incident in Okanagan County where she

was standing several hundred feet away from the blast site and set her

noise-activated tape recorder to record the sounds. However, she said the

machine could not pick up on the noise created by the blast.

The company will also create a partial enclosure around their drills

to absorb much of the sound, Park said, and a 30-foot berm will be

constructed around the top of the property and a 300-foot berm at the bottom to

further control the noise.

Jackels added that if there were a concern about the mine blasting

during school hours, that was an issue that could be mitigated before the

final approval.

Another concern for many residents in the area is the future

of McCauley Falls. The water currently dissects the property in the middle

and would need to be relocated during the life of the mine. Jackels said that

the path of the water wouldn’t be disrupted at least for a couple of

decades. During that time, crews will construct a series of ponds and

connecting streams for the new falls which will snake around the southern

perimeter of the lot to reconnect with Cherry Creek.

“We’re building an additional 2,600 feet of habitable waters

for salmon,” Jackels said. “We’re going to make the falls more beautiful

and we’ll enhance the stream and falls.”

According to the proposal, the quarry will be active for about

60 years, depending on market demands and influences. The sales forecast

for the first year is 100,000 tons and increasing to 182 trucks

carrying 500,000 tons by the fifth year. A traffic study conducted in

September 1999 by the Transpo Group predicted that out of the 2,150 vehicles

that travel along the Woodinville-Duvall Road, only .1 percent of those

would be from the Duvall Mine.

“Part of the [500 truck trips per day] will be replacement

traffic,” Jackels said, noting that the

Duvall Mine would absorb some portion of existing truck traffic. “But what

part? I don’t know.”

The city of Duvall is already concerned about the increased amount

of traffic that has come to the area over the past few years. The staff is in

the first stages of updating the Comprehensive Plan which guides the

direction of the city _ including what to do about the growing traffic

concerns. And downtown business owners have previously expressed their

opposition to the mine because of the added traffic the trucks would create.

Those and other concerns were addressed at the State

Environmental Policy Act scoping hearing earlier

this week. The intent of the meeting was to gather public input on what

issues should be addressed in the quarry’s Draft Environmental Impact

Statement. The county will use the study to either accept or deny the

company’s application.

The president of Friends of Cherry Valley, a group that opposes the

mine, said that the mine poses too much of a threat to the area’s habitat, quality

of life and rural character _ issues that can’t easily be mitigated.

“My main concern is that I am sincerely concerned that there

are unmitigatable impacts that are not adequately addressed in this

proposal,” she said. “And I truly believe that

this permit is going to have to be denied.

“We’re relying on King County to follow through on the SEPA Act

_ that’s our safety net and we’re relying on them to do that.”