Azusa Council Votes to Approve Vulcan Revised Mining and Reclamation Plan

By Terry Miller

Published: Thursday, July 8th, 2010

Following months of meetings, public input and controversy, the Azusa City Council voted 4 to 1 to allow Vulcan Materials Company to expand its mining operations from a currently approved and partially mined 80 acres on the east side of its 270 acre property to a pristine mountain ridge above Duarte homes and schools. The council also voted 4 to 1 to give first reading approval to a development deal, expected to generate in excess of $67 million in advance mining fees, additional extraction surcharges and other financial incentives for the City of Azusa over the life of the agreement to extend to 2038. The deal is also expected to generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the Birmingham, Alabama based Vulcan.
Only Azusa Mayor, Joe Rocha who said he had done a lot of “soul searching” voted against the Vulcan Revised Conditional Use Permit, Revised Reclamation and accompanying development agreement. Mayor Rocha expressed three gnawing concerns, one of which was the mining of Van Tassel Ridge. “Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.” He also again questioned Vulcan’s real motives for wanting to move its mining operations to an area with one million less tons of available aggregate, and said he was bothered by the fact that “if it was the right thing to do” why Vulcan would only agree to the purported superior micro-benching reclamation if the 80-acre switch was approved. But he was alone.
“This council is going to be chiseling its name in stone for a project that we are going to have to live with. We’re going to own this one way or another, And I think that owning this enhanced proposal is better than…what is currently permitted,” said Azusa Councilman Keith Hanks who made the motion to approve the plan that provides for concurrent reclamation utilizing two-foot benches rather than 40-foot Mayan steps.
“I can’t help but think what this stable revenue stream will mean to our residents…but never, never was money the first factor in any of this,” said Councilman Uriel Macias, who seconded the motion to approve. It was Councilman Macias who at the previous meeting had urged Vulcan back to the negotiating table to shore up environmental and financial assurances in the development agreement and to address a laundry list of 16 concerns that included the sparing of Van Tassel Ridge.
While Azusa staff and ultimately the majority of the council were satisfied with the resolve of 14 of the 16 concerns and the additional $8 million in financial incentives that Vulcan added to the pot to sweeten the deal, Duarte City Attorney, Jeffrey Melching told the Azusa council, “You did not achieve 14 of your 16 negotiating goals. He said, “You really got only one, kind of. You got $8 million for open space when you really asked for open space and community programs and what it looks like to me is that’s what was good enough to sell out the other 15 points.”
Duarte City Manager, Darrell George said Duarte is extremely disappointed in the Azusa City Council’s actions. “Especially because just a little over a month ago they voted no for a plan that is almost identical, although this is worse. It’s unfortunate that Duarte and San Gabriel Valley residents will have to endure the destruction and removal of 106 million tons of rock over the next 28 years and the lowering of Van Tassel Ridge by 800 feet.”
George said the City of Duarte plans to “take some time and look at all the options we have to continue to fight this decision, including litigation on CEQA and Brown Act violations.”
More than 100 members of the public attended the nearly six hour council meeting that ended shortly after midnight. A few residents of Mountain Cove, an expensive, newer Azusa community of homes that would be in the sight line of continued mining on the east if the revised plan failed, asked the council to do the right thing by them. But a majority of the 35 speakers, many from Duarte as well as Duarte public officials, representatives of Congressmember Judy Chu, Supervisor Michael Antonovich, the Azusa-based Save Our Canyon group, and the Sierra Club urged the council to vote against the plan.
A major selling point by Vulcan for its plan, and crucial to the City of Azusa, has been Vulcan’s promise to reclaim within two years the eyesore Mayan steps visible for miles with the micro-benching technique. But Congresswoman Chu, in a letter read to the council, said she finds language pertaining to that in the draft document “completely erroneous at best and disingenuous at worst,” Vulcan’s document states that work would commence upon final approval by the city of the company to mine, excavate, and develop the entire site.
“Considering that this proposal only addresses the 80 acre swap and that Vulcan only has permission to mine 190 of the 270 acres…setting approval of mining for the entire site as a condition for commencing micro-benching would in affect ensure that the micro-benching never happens,” she wrote.
For its part, Save Our Canyon, which has been fighting mining expansion plans by Vulcan for the past five years, is gearing up for a referendum. The group would have to collect about 1,400 Azusa voter signatures to qualify the issue to go to a special election. They would have 30 days from the time of the second reading of the development agreement to gather the signatures.
“History continues to repeat itself in Azusa. Bad decisions were made by political leaders in the 1920’s to allow rock mining to destroy the landscape, and bad decisions were repeated by Azusa councils in the ‘50s, ‘80s, ‘90s, and here we are again. A sad legacy,” said George.
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Posted by Terry Miller on Jul 8th, 2010 and filed under Latest News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response by filling following comment form or trackback to this entry from your site

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