(Originally Published Jan. 26 2007 by the Pacific Coast Business Times)
Nearly 150 years after Ventura County split away from Santa Barbara County, residents of its Ojai Valley region are hoping to stop a proposed rock mine at a 133-acre site in the Cuyama River Valley in northern Santa Barbara County. Known as the Diamond Rock Mining and Reclamation Project and proposed by Nipomo-based Troesh Materials Inc. the site is 5.9 miles south of state Route 166 on Route 33.
Ojai Valley residents worry that trucks carrying concrete to construction sites in Ventura County will overload the twisty, two-lane Route 33.
The Santa Barbara County Planning Commission is considering whether to issue a permit for the project. Gary Kaiser, the commission staffer in charge of the project, said a final environmental impact report could be ready by the end of February and an approval may take place at an April commission hearing.
If the commission issues a permit, opponents can appeal it to the full Board of Supervisors; if it does not, Troesh may appeal the decision. Arbitration would precede any board decision, which could take place in September. There are also a number of less rigorous state and federal permits that must be obtained. Although they have no official say in the project, Ventura County residents are flooding the commission with letters as part of a public comment period on the draft EIR.
Backers argue that the mine will meet demand for aggregate materials in three regions: San Luis Obispo-Santa Barbara, Bakersfield and Western Ventura County.
The EIR cites 2002 California Geological Survey statistics showing that West Ventura County has no permitted aggregate available for the 141 million tons it will need over the next 50 years. The Troesh Mine would satisfy 4 percent of Ventura’s demand over 30 years.
Steve Troesh, the owner of Troesh Materials, said it isn’t feasible to transport the aggregate demanded by Ventura County via an alternate route, such as over Route 166 to Highway 101.
“One thing you got to work with is Highway 33 is a state highway,” Troesh said.
“If you look up the meaning of a state highway it’s to haul the commodities from point A to point B and that’s what we’re doing.”
Current supplies come from Palmdale and Lancaster, he said. Avoiding Route 33 would mean that it would be cheaper for builders to buy aggregate from those locations than from Troesh.
But Lisa Meeker is not convinced. She is a resident of the Ojai Valley and a former chair of the Ojai Valley Municipal Advisory Council.
While Meeker is concerned about dangerous driving and degradation of the road surface from mining trucks, she said one of her primary concerns is pedestrian traffic in the community of Casitas Springs, where there are no sidewalks along the highway and many homes are close to the road.
There are mitigation efforts that prevent trucks from traveling on the road in the mornings and afternoons when school children are most likely to be walking home from school bus drop offs. But Meeker said those measures were written in consultation with the Ojai Unified School District and its Nordhoff High School in mind. However, most students from Casitas Springs attend Ventura High School, which is part of the Ventura Unified School District, neither of which were consulted for the EIR.
“The issue of school kids is really a big one in Casitas Springs,” Meeker said. “You’ve got kids in that whole walkway area for a much broader period of time than was addressed.”
Meeker said she is not trying to get the mine shut down. Instead, she said, it needs more study. Whatever impact Troesh’s plans may have, there are already too many trucks traveling Route 33, she said.
“One of the reasons why there’s such a strong response to this problem [is] because it had reached a tipping point,” she said.
Troesh said that he was willing to consider mitigation suggestions. He also said he is seeking a permit that will let him run trucks 24 hours a day (outside of the periods before and after school) to eliminate daytime traffic by spreading out truck trips.
“We’re in the business to make sure its safe,” Troesh said. “Anything that’s going to do harm to the community we don’t want to work with.”
The draft EIR predicts a 3 percent increase in annual traffic on Ojai’s north end if the project is approved, a 17 percent interest on the northern extremes of Route 33 near the mine and a smaller than 1 percent increase between Ojai and the coastline.
Trucks are a smaller percentage of traffic on Route 33 than other highways. Current California Department of Transportation statistics show that truck traffic represents 3.2 percent of the average of 29,000 vehicles traveling in both directions on the roadway through Casitas Springs. By comparison, on Interstate-710 near the I-105 interchange in Los Angeles County, trucks represent 15 percent of the daily traffic of 220,000 vehicles.
But Highway 33 is not an urban freeway. It meanders through scenic river valleys and climbs into the mountains north of Ojai. This is what concerns Lanie Springer, the current chair of the Highway 33 Committee.
“This is a small country road,” Springer, a 50-year-resident of the Ojai Valley, said. “It has children, it has schools, it has communities. You’re putting these big, double-trailer loads here. It’s going to deteriorate. There are going to be accidents. I understand where [Troesh is] coming from a business standpoint. But he’s got to understand he’s coming through all these cities.”
Steve DeGeorge, the Ventura County Transportation Commission staffer responsible for reviewing California Environmental Quality Act compliance, said that the VCTC will try to participate in the public comment period for the project. All it can do is comment but normally the VCTC is brought in earlier on projects that might have an impact on Ventura County roadways, he said.
“In this case we weren’t brought in terribly early into this process,” DeGeorge said. “It’s possible that the County of Santa Barbara will consider our comments and make those recommendations. Should they choose not to do that it could be a matter of taking things to court. Thirty-three is so impacted now that we’re concerned about any additional traffic on 33 and certainly we’re concerned about any large vehicles because that brings a number of safety issues to mind.”
Santa Barbara County does not have to include any consideration of Ventura County impacts in its decision-making.
Regardless, a fight is brewing.
“Santa Barbara could care less because it’s not affecting them,” Springer said. “We’re going to do what we got to do to save the community. I’m not as literate as I wish I could be. I’ve lived here 50 years and I’ve seen changes and they’ve got to happen because without change you stagnate. But let’s have the changes be good ones and not destructive.”
