Officials Stand Up to Mining Company

Elected city officials took their first official stand against a proposed granite quarry near Temecula.

The City Council approved a resolution Tuesday making their opposition to the mining project official.

Granite Construction, a Watsonville-based aggregate company, began the permitting process in 2005 for an open-pit mine planned for a site adjacent to Temecula’s southern border.

At full build-out, the mine will be about a mile long, 1,000 feet deep and spread over 155 acres, according to records.

The city’s resolution criticizes a report on the impacts the quarry would have on the environment. The report was “incomplete,” “fundamentally misleading” and “altogether ignores or omits negative impacts,” according to Betsy Lowrey, an assistant city planner.

The city blamed the plan for potentially “degrading air quality, increasing traffic and transportation impacts, adversely impacting biological and cultural resources and negatively impacting the economy,” wrote Lowrey in a report.

Since the site sits outside Temecula’s city limits, Granite filed its application for mining permits with the county. Temecula sent the county’s Board of Supervisors a letter opposing a report on the mine’s effect on the environment – a report needed to get permits – in January, but the protest had no effect, Lowrey wrote. This gave the city incentive to write its anti-quarry resolution.

Residents spoke passionately against the quarry at the meet Tuesday.

“I’m beyond my limits on this quarry,” said Wayne Hall, a Temecula resident. He recalled living in Rubidoux as a child. A quarry was nearby, and several times a day, he would hear a blast and all the house’s lights would rattle in their sockets, he recalled.

The blasting from the quarry will kick up crystalline silica, a carcinogen, and the Santa Ana winds will carry it into Temecula, said Lowrey during a presentation.

This left some residents concerned. “We depend on the wind to pollinate the crops,” said Jack Roripaugh, the grandson of one of the city’s founding families and a wheat farmer. “The thousands of children in the area deserve to grow up with really clean air,” he said.

The anti-quarry resolution rides in the wake of three cities far from Temecula passing resolutions in favor of the quarry.

Banning, Beaumont and Eastvale officially supported it recently, but Temecula residents were unimpressed. “I don’t see the other cities who approve of the quarry volunteering to have them move the quarry to their town,” said Edward Monroe, a Temecula resident.

Temecula officials spoke out against the quarry and numerous past events, but only as Temecula residents, not as city council members. The resolution was the city’s first official act against the quarry.

Some residents were worried about how the air quality will affect businesses. “This will absolutely kill Abbott in six months,” said Mario Abab, a Temecula resident who worked on the company’s air filtration system.

The decisive meetings on the mining permits will happen in Temecula next month.

Granite will likely “bus” phony supporters to the meeting, so council members asked the public to attend. “We outnumber their hired guns and paid proponents.”

Two meetings are set to vote on the companies’ permits. One is set for 4 p.m. April 26 at Rancho Community Church, 31300 Rancho Community Way. The other is set for 3 p.m. May 3 at the Riverside Convention Center, 3443 Orange Street, Riverside.