John Ross photo Local residents listen intently to speaker Sabrina Ratkowski during the town hall meeting held last Monday.
by JOHN ROSS/for The Herald — They came, in clusters or singly to find their way past the other locked doors and into the Oakridge High School Auditorium, all a little disappointed over the fight they thought was over and that they had won. They had not.
TV Butte might yet become “TV Pit”, blasted, scraped, scooped and dump-trucked away as gravel for road surfaces, railroad beds, construction projects or whatever industry might bid the highest for nearby crushed rock.
Another “fight on” for Save TV Butte group
The crew of Save TV Butte volunteers had celebrated that they had saved a scenic promontory from being hauled away one, loud, black-smoke belching dump truck at a time. Truck after truck, down and through town turning Oakridge into anything but the quiet, scenic tourist destination with the image of the Mountain Biking Capitol of the World – a place where folks come to hike or play disc golf. People are drawn to the scenic beauty surrounded by pristine National Forest, clear mountain runoff-fed streams and Wild and Scenic River sections for a reason.
The townspeople feel paradise would be lost. Nameless, faceless investors masquerading under the ironic umbrella corporate label of Stonebroke, LLC, would destroy it.
And that loud, toxic vision of Oakridge, ground down and degraded on so many levels, had spurred dedicated citizens with quite another vision to a town hall meeting Monday night. They came to contemplate just how bad things would get and what they might do with limited time, funds and human resources to stop the stone breaking and mountain blasting—one more time.
The previous applicants, an investment arm of King Estates Winery, had lost its $15-million lawsuit against Lane County. They were denied their application the first round, primarily because the site had become birthing grounds for resident elk herds that couldn’t just be bulldozed away.
Enter Sabrina Ratkowski
Sabrina Ratkowski, an Oakridge resident, stood before the roughly 50-member audience and grimly laid out the worst and least worst-case scenarios. She appeared weary from long days at two jobs—this one unpaid. Her other job, just as demanding, is as a full-time mortgage broker. But she thought no one would be there otherwise, laying out the unsettling facts of the latest fight from menacing corporate greedy forces, just across the county and far away from the noise and waste of their envisioned cash cow.
So, she stood up for the town she thought she had found, realizing her dream come true. She had found her a small village wrapped in pristine national forests and riverscapes with trails and solitude a short hike away. Then the shocking news broke that King Estates and company were raising the stakes and going all in with the backing of new partners and an internationally recognized and acclaimed law firm that specialized in gravel industry startups and defenses.
Stonebroke’s current application
So far, plans for the Old Hazeldell Quarry reside in the bowels of Lane County’s Planning Department. Previous plans moved at a snail’s pace that took six years to complete. The last round concluded with a stinging rejection of the idea of hauling gravel rock through town and along Highway 58. Before the town hall audience, Sabrina Ratkowski laid out a multi-pronged strategy to expose the vague Stonebreaker promises fraught with understated impacts.
Everything from human health indoor and outdoor hazards including fitness recreation like trail hiking or biking, and simple, passive scenery enjoyment were downplayed. It’s all rosy promises in the current application to extract the mountaintop Hazeldell promontory a half mile uphill to Dunning Road and downhill to swirling Salmon Creek.
Numerous areas of concern
During the first 20 minutes, Ms. Ratkowski laid out ideas for keeping safe the Butte focused on eight main areas of concern, including economy & tourism, property values, noise, vistas, air quality, water quality, wildlife and habitat quality, and indigenous heritage sites, including a reported burial site.
Specific issues she described included various expected impacts of quarry activities on the tourism activities, like bike riding, fishing, birding and trail hiking by visitors and locals alike. How could people not hear echoes of blasting or dump trucks loaded with gravel winding their way down Dunning Road and along Fish Hatchery Road onto Highway 58 and through town? And what’s to keep the eventual owners and operators from expanding their operations or continuing past the number of years initially permitted?
Extraction mining has a poor record of compliance
What happens when most extraction mining operations fail to meet regulations or their promised standards? Currently 90 percent of gravel pit operations statewide, she reported, are listed as non-compliant on one issue or another? Then who do you call? When does voluntary compliance kick in, if ever?
Property values, Ms. Ratkowski asserted, almost certainly would be negatively impacted valley wide as people who came here for the relative peace and serenity bail out from constant, incessant mining and hauling. Homeowners could expect a 20 percent or more reduction in local property values and a devalued seller’s market. Would the supposed income in wages at the quarry and retail purchases somehow offset those losses? Or, lead to economic declines in both Oakridge and Westfir? Some businesses would almost certainly look elsewhere for a market that initially attracted and supported them.
Noise and air pollution in the community are big concerns
As for blaring, echoed noise, Stonebroke LLC offers no actual models or concrete estimates of levels that would occur on blasting days. Just how tolerable or intolerable might it become? Without doubt, the quality of living would be impaired by noise level spikes three to five decades, five or six days a week. “You definitely are going to hear dumping and rock crusher noise when they are working,” Ratkowski asserted.
As trees and life-teeming understory communities are graded aside to make way for the gravel pit, vistas near and far would essentially be degraded from all directions. Air quality would also take an unknown but likely-significant hit in a valley already challenged by seasonal inversions that trap wood and wildfire smoke valley-wide. More Purple Air days are likely, with people being encouraged to remain indoors for the sake of their lungs.
Fire risk and consequences
Would mining operations exacerbate or even start fires? How would Stonebroke, LLC operators deal with the consequences of area forest fires and smoke-filled hazardous air? This, on top of what silica dust issues the quarry would already raise. Global temperatures are increasing, and wildfire outbreaks with greater intensity are projected to follow? Would the mining have to suspend operations taking away from projected economic contributions to local economy? Ms. Ratkowski noted vague promises from Stonebroke that the operating company would help underwrite local school and community events. Real, or pie in the sky she wondered, as with so many other promises.
“They are saying everything is going to work out perfect,” she said. “We are asking, ‘Where is the proof?’”
Numerous questions surround the abandoned Hazeldell landfill where citizens have reported hazardous waste dumping, sometimes under the cover of darkness. This could also have included waste from the departed Pope & Talbot mill. So far, the applicants have resisted testing for toxic chemicals on site and in rain runoff that might increase due to both abandoned landfill seepage and gravel extracting.
Could the City of Oakridge be hung out to dry in the event of an environmental mishap?
Curiously, a codicil in the property’s deed still includes a covenant that places liability on the City of Oakridge for unspecified environmental damages. Runoff could compound either groundwater pollution in the community or of local surface streams and rivers. No word on whether and how that would be addressed in the permitting process. It seems unclear which local, state or federal agencies would step up to prevent and regulate noxious water flowing downslope and outward from the blasting, digging and bucketing.
Questions surfaced about impacts on wildlife beyond herds that should be considered as well. Private lands aren’t normally held to the same levels of scrutiny and accountability as public holdings.
So many questions, so few concrete answers emerged as the discussion moved through the two hours of allotted time. Won’t the railroad tracks below the site be negatively impacted, either by the mining or hauling, requiring Union Pacific Railroad involvement? How would indigenous heritage site issues get resolved?
Where would the operating company get water for keeping the carcinogenic silica dust down both on the site and from barreling dump trucks? Who would be monitoring those emissions? Or would the company’s non-compliance record join the 90 percent of scofflaw operations already in the State?
An engaging and active audience
So many questions. So little time – time necessary to create and solidify solutions and bring them resolutely into the County permitting process – time for guaranteeing meaningful oversight and timely, effective enforcement – time in short supply. For all the questions she brought forward in the first 20 minutes of the two-hour program, members of the attending public raised as many or more during the question-and-discussion period that lasted for another 90 minutes. All of them equally thorny.
Ms. Ratkowski admitted some comfort about the many imposing concerns based on coming in earlier in the permitting process.
“We’re starting all over again so we can add many additional arguments that we couldn’t last time: the local economy, traffic issues and more,” she said. “You are more than welcome to submit testimony.”
When the Lane County planning department completes its assessment, the planning commission establishes a review period of 20 days before the County Commissioners make their deliberations and decision. “It’s a lot of leg work,” she said, noting a lot can happen between now and the closing of comments.
The time to become involved is now
In the meantime, she said citizens can start now by sending their perspectives, concerns, expertise, and arguments to Planner Tayor Carsley or any Lane County Commissioner, referencing the new permit numbers. “You don’t have to be an expert to express your opinions,” she encouraged.
Citizens can also choose to be anonymous if they feel the need. Carsley will be collecting and reviewing the comments along with other sources and perspectives. You are more than welcome to submit testimony, she was told, at any time up until the hearing takes place and a decision is rendered on the application.
She also took time to appreciate the help of volunteers assisting with everything from research, event planning, communications and standard volunteer advocacy office tasks. “Any help is appreciated.”
The commissioners will not vote until after all the information has been compiled and reviewed. “So, it’s going to be a long process,” she said. “All are more than welcome,” she added, considering that the previous application took six whole years before it was denied in October 2021. “Normally, applications can take about eight months to a year for approval,” she said. There are a lot of things that could occur such as fires and other impacts that could push the timeline out.
More than those who know might dare say.
George Custer lives in Oakridge with his wife Sayre. George is a former smokejumper from his hometown of Cave Junction, a former captain in the U.S. Marine Corps. and ran a construction company in Southern California. George assumed the volunteer duties as the Editor of the Highway 58 Herald in 2022. He loves riding his Harley-Davidson motorcycle, building all things wood, and playing drums on the weekends in his office.
