A gravel company’s proposal to mine 550 acres
of farmland near the Willamette River has farmers fighting to save
their soil.
A mild, wet climate and top-grade
soils make Oregon’s Willamette River Valley a prime farming
location. “Anything you put in it will grow,” says Thom Lanfear,
planner for Lane County. The river valley, however, also contains
high-quality gravel used for road base.
Now it’s
up to the county to decide whether growing food or building roads
is more important. In 1999, Eugene Sand and Gravel Co. applied for
Lane County’s permission to mine gravel at a site about four miles
north of Eugene. Critics of the proposed gravel mine say hundreds
of truck trips per day and increased dust will disrupt wildlife,
including threatened chinook salmon, and hurt local farms and
businesses.
A couple who own a farm and a popular
produce market bordering the proposed mine have already gathered
more than 10,000 signatures opposing the company’s plan, mostly
from customers at their roadside stand. Randy Henderson, owner of
Thistledown Farm, says the increased traffic from gravel trucks
will harm his retail business, and he also worries that digging
below the water table will ruin his irrigation
system.
“We just don’t think (the mine) is a very
good use of our resources,” he says. “It’s short-term thinking for
the profit of a few people. It doesn’t have the people of Oregon in
mind at all.”
“We’ve gone to great lengths to
listen to all concerns out there,” says the company’s president,
Mike Alltucker. Eugene Sand and Gravel has submitted more than
1,000 pages of studies to the county, and is required to mitigate
impacts on neighbors of the site. The company plans to reclaim the
area, gradually turning it into a wildlife refuge during the 20-30
years it is mined.
The county is expected to
decide by the end of the year whether to change the site’s zoning
designation from agricultural to
industrial.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Farm it or mine it?.
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