Sisters residents rally against gravel mine

By Jim Cornelius

Over 100 Sisters area residents gathered at Sisters Middle/High School football field September 9 to register opposition to a proposed surface mine and gravel crushing operation four miles west of Sisters.

The rally was part teach-in and part appeal for community support in what is shaping up to be a long fight on two fronts.

The Deschutes County Hearings Officer is expected to hand down a decision soon on the proposed surface mine on 640 acres off the McKenzie Highway. Mine opponents vowed at the rally that, if the decision goes in favor of the applicants, Hap Taylor and Sons, Inc. and Crown Pacific, the opponents will appeal to the Deschutes County Commissioners.

They also unveiled a lawsuit filed last week in federal court challenging the use of Forest Service roads for the mine operation.

The lawsuit claims that the Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act when it granted easements to previous owners of the mine property in 1982 and violated the act again in 1995 when it gave approval to use local Forest Service roads to access the mine site.

According to mine opponents, an Environmental Impact Statement should have been prepared at those times. An EIS would require the federal agency to analyze the various social and environmental impacts of granting the easements.

The plaintiffs further argue that the Forest Service's approval of the mine site contradicts the agencies own goals with the McKenzie-Santiam Scenic By-way.

Attorney James T. Massey, who has been retained by several families who oppose the mine, explained the lawsuit to the attentive crowd.

Massey warned that critics would call the lawsuit a delaying tactic.

"It is a tactic that may result in delay," Massey said. "But it is a tactic to win."

Karen Shimamoto, District Ranger for the Sisters Ranger District, told The Nugget that "the lawsuit brings up some interesting legal questions that are definitely beyond my knowledge on how NEPA is applied."

She said a response to the suit would probably come from the Regional Office of the Forest Service in Portland.

Shimamoto stressed that the Forest Service has not approved the mine.

"We did not approve the mine," she said. "We responded as an adjacent landowner that we had some questions with the first application about water quality, water table, noise, traffic.

"Jim Bussard (an engineer working for Hap Taylor and Sons) took the Information and revised the plan," Shimamoto said. "We said he had addressed our concerns. That does not mean we were approving the project... By addressing our concerns we did not mean he satisfied us that the concerns would be alleviated. It simply means he addressed the concerns when they had been silent on these issues before.

"We left it for Deschutes County to decide and hope that this Information will be used in their decision," she said.

Massey said that mine opponents want the Forest Service to withdraw their letter of concurrence with the project from the land use process and tell the mine developer that the road easements cannot be extended to use of the mine because the proper studies have not been done.

Finally, Massey said, the agency should just come out and say that the mine is a bad idea.

Mine opponents acknowledged that the lawsuit was only one weapon in the fight against the mine and urged the crowd at the rally to turn out in force at all land use hearings.

"This isn't a fight we want," declared John Hornbeck, a key mine opponent. "But it's a fight that's necessary and the community is at stake.

"We're in this for the long haul," he said. "It's going to take the Sisters community to do this."

And, the mine opponents said, they need ammunition to keep fighting.

Fred Pelkey, one of the first Sisters citizens to come out against the mine proposal told The Nugget: "This is not going to be a short war and we need money or the war is going to end."