Planning group forms committee to examine Liberty quarry

By: TOM PFINGSTEN - Staff Writer
'Rosemary's Mountain' project also discussed | Tuesday, October 16, 2007 12:04 AM PDT ∞

FALLBROOK -- The Fallbrook Planning Group voted Monday night to form a committee to study the effects that a proposed quarry, just over the Riverside County line to the northeast, may have on Fallbrook.

It was the first official step for the community's land use panel in investigating the proposed 155-acre Liberty quarry, which initially it declined to review because the proposed area is in Riverside County.

Granite Construction, the company behind the proposal, said the operations would not have an impact on anyone in Fallbrook. Construction would include blasting and crushing rock in the hills west of Interstate 15, opposite the Border Patrol checkpoint, to make aggregate, the sand and gravel used in building materials.

Still, Granite Construction spokesman Gary Johnson said that he planned to provide the new committee with all the reports that the project generated.

"We welcome the opportunity to meet with your subcommittee ... once all the technical reports are in," Johnson said.

Planning group chairman Jim Russell said that he wanted those on the new committee to become experts on the documents.

"What the quarry owners are doing now is preparing technical reports that will become the basis for the Environmental Impact Report," Russell said.

"It's my intention that this committee is going to burn the midnight oil and become as knowledgeable as Gary Johnson is when the EIR hits the street, so they can go through that report and find where the problems are for the community of Fallbrook," he added.

Planning group member Jim Oenning, who spurred the group to join the debate over the quarry and will head the new committee, said it would begin by investigating air and water quality.

"Everybody's gone home to read as many documents as we can put together," he said, declining to comment on a report on Granite Construction's Web site stating that the proposed quarry would not increase airborne silica. "I'm going to hold off until we've had a chance to do a lot more investigation."

In the debate about quarries built near neighborhoods, a medical condition known as "silicosis" has taken center stage, with residents who live near the proposed quarry worried about the possibility of airborne pollutants causing long-term health problems.

Oenning, whose 36-year-old son, Eric, died in 2005 of a silicosis-related asthma attack, said in an interview last month that the effects of the disease are hideous and irreversible.

"Crystalline silica is a result of breaking rock -- you end up with very small, microscopic particles," he said. "If you look at them under a microscope, they have very jagged edges and points on them. It's no different, chemically, than sand, but sand has been blown and washed around enough that it has no sharp points on it.

"Because of the shape of the (crystalline silica) particles, they lodge more easily in the lungs, and when the body tries to remove them, it can't do it," he said.

These particles have been shown to emanate from quarries, and are light enough to be blown for miles on a windy day, Oenning said.

Just how many miles may prove to be a key point of contention.

Granite Construction officials have produced studies they say prove that the proposed Liberty would not cause an increase in airborne silica in the area.

Fallbrook, they say, is out of range of airborne silica, and out of earshot of the blasting involved in the gravel mining process.

The newly formed planning group committee has the task of gathering as much information as possible on those points.

After voting to form the new committee to look into the proposed Liberty quarry, the group had a lengthy discussion about another gravel mine being developed by Granite Construction.

Dubbed the "Rosemary's Mountain" quarry, for the hill northeast of the I-15/Highway 76 interchange on which it would operate, the project is further along, having an approved environmental impact report and only three permits remaining before Granite Construction can begin mining there.

Oenning presented information that he said sheds new light on the Rosemary's Mountain environmental documents, and suggested that the group request that the county re-examine the project's EIR.

Three homeowners from the nearby Lake Rancho Viejo neighborhood also pressed the group to request another evaluation.

The issue was on the agenda as a nonvoting item, but Russell said it would be brought back at next month's meeting for a vote.

-- Contact staff writer Tom Pfingsten at (760) 740-3516 or tpfingsten@nctimes.com.