Press Release: County Judge Overturns Syar Phase VI Project EIR Approval
Contact: Don McEnhill, Riverkeeper
(707)217-4762, rrkeeper@sonic.net
11/16/2009
Healdsburg, CA: Three decades after Dr Martin Griffin first opposed strip-mining pits along the Russian River, Sonoma Superior Court Judge Robert Boyd overturned the county’s approval of the Syar Phase VI mining project in an action that could signal an end of this permanently destructive practice.
Since 1993, Russian Riverkeeper, formerly Friends of the Russian River, have opposed the deep riverside strip mining pits due to permanent and significant impacts that the Sonoma County’s 1994 Aggregate Resources Management Plan (ARM Plan) documented.
“Russian Riverkeeper viewed the April 2006 sunset provision for strip mining for gravel along the Russian River as a deadline to end pit mining but as we suspected pro-mining Supervisors ignored this important mitigation for past mining”, said Don McEnhill, Riverkeeper and Executive Director for Russian Riverkeeper. “We believed that the county was breaking their own rules by blowing off the 2006 deadline and Judge Boyd affirmed this last week”.
Judge Boyd thoroughly rejected Syar and the county’s argument that the ten-year limit was not set in stone and that the 1994 ARM Plan would allow continued mining stating the continued mining would be a violation of the ARM plan.
Dr Martin Griffin, the founder of Friends of the Russian River and now Russian Riverkeeper started the organization principally to organize opposition to gravel mining and in particular, the deep strip mine pits that permanently destroyed farmland and compromised the middle reach groundwater aquifer that contains more water than Lake Sonoma. Today the majority of aggregate for concrete is imported and with the railroad opening in the near future new sources of aggregate can be imported at a much lower environmental cost so the need to continued strip mining is questionable when construction picks up again in the future.
Russian Riverkeeper joined Westside Association to Save Agriculture, comprised of vineyard and property owners near the project, and North Coast Rivers Alliance in the lawsuit filed November 6, 2008.
Russian Riverkeeper, a Healdsburg based non-profit conservation organization, was founded in 1993 and with the mission to work with the community to advocate, educate and uphold our environmental laws to ensure the protection and restoration of the Russian River for the health and benefit of all who enjoy it.
