Thursday, March 4, 2021
ThE OBsErVEr — 5A
QUARRY
HOW TO PARTICIPATE
IN THE HEARING
Continued from Page 1A
awareness about the meeting and
express concerns with the quarry
and handed them out in Perry and
to businesses in La Grande. He
created a Facebook page, Stop the
Robbs Hill Road Quarry, which
as of Wednesday, March 3, had 52
followers. And Moyal started an
online petition against the quarry
on change.org. More than 530
people have signed the document
so far.
Moyal said if the county gives
the approval, the problems with the
quarry will be here in the Grand
Ronde Valley for a long time.
Depending on what part of the
application you read, he said, the
lifespan of the quarry is 89 years
or 137 years and would extract 300
million tons of rock. Per the appli-
cation, one gallon of diesel via
rail can transport 1 ton of aggre-
gate 440 miles, and the plan is to
ship 2,000 tons a day every day of
the year to Western states. Doing
the math, he said, and being gen-
erous with doubling the distance,
requires almost 1.47 million gal-
lons of diesel a year.
“The carbon footprint is truly
alarming,” Moyal said. “This is
an immense amount of fuel being
burned and an immense amount of
carbon being emitted.”
That makes the quarry, he said,
“a massive polluting project.”
Others also concerned
Raymond Myer of La Grande
also is opposed to the project. He
said as a child he played in the
seasonal creeks that run through
where the quarry would operate.
He questioned the reasons behind
the proposal.
“First off, there’s no need for it,”
he said. “Second, environmentally
it’s wrong. And third, it would be
an eyesore.”
Union County and the sur-
rounding areas have several rock
quarries, he said, and Harney Rock
• The Union County Planning Com-
mission is holding a public hearing
Monday, March 8, at 7 p.m. via tele-
conference to consider approving
the application for a large quarry at
the juncture of Robbs Hill Road and
Interstate 84 near Perry. To listen
to or participate in the hearing, call
253-215-8782 or 669-900-6833 and
enter meeting identification No.
995 6180 8582.
Alex Wittwer/The Observer
David Moyal of La Grande pauses Tuesday, March 2, 2021, outside Perry near the site of a proposed quarry.
Moyal is leading the charge in opposition to the proposal.
& Paving Co. in North Powder
already provides ballast to Union
Pacific Railroad for the Pacific
Northwest and other rock products
to the local community.
The outdoors and fish and
wildlife matter to residents here,
Myer said. The site for the quarry
helps support several hundred
elk, and he said erosion from a
quarry would raise concerns for
endangered salmon spawn in the
Grande Ronde River, which is
adjacent to and downhill from
the site.
“Here we go again, destroying
their habitat,” Myer said.
Dust pollution from the site
would blow down the canyon into
La Grande, and the place would
be noisy. And like Moyal, he said
a quarry operation of this scope
could knock the “scenic” right out
of the scenic corridor.
“Is it still (scenic)? If so, how
can this rock quarry be turned
into the scar on the hillside next to
I-84?” he said.
Myer said he sees another
problem with the location.
Robbs Hill Road is a narrow,
poorly maintained, steep road with a
creek running next to it down to the
Grande Ronde River, he said, and
homeowners and recreational users
depend on the road for access to
Perry when Interstate 84 is closed.
A big operation right off the road
will not make that situation better.
Dan Steele said he lives in Perry
and also does not want the quarry
to go in. A retired railroad worker,
he said he spent a long time around
the Harney rock pit, and big quar-
ries mean heavy equipment and
inevitable breakdowns that lead to
diesel spills and more. All of those
fluids, he said, would end up in the
Grande Ronde River.
“There’s just a lot of things
wrong with the whole thing,” he
said, including possible deprecia-
tion of property values. Steele also
joined the chorus in questioning
the placement of the project.
The Harney pit for example, he
said, is far from any scenic area
and homes. Steele said his home,
where his grandchildren often
visit, would be half a mile from the
Robbs Hill Road pit.
“There’s got to be a million
places more appropriate for such a
quarry,” Steele said.
Preparing for the
longer fight
Moyal said he has put together
about 35 pages of specific objections
for the county planning commission
to consider at the Monday meeting.
The real purpose of gathering all the
details he can, he said, is to be ready
with an appeal to the Oregon Land
Use Board of Appeals, the tribunal
that serves as the arbiter of local
land use decisions in the state.
CANYON
Continued from Page 1A
conditions,” said Jim Zach-
arias, a member of the Wal-
lowa Resources Board of
Directors.
Schmidt said those condi-
tions require 6 inches of frost
or 12 inches of snow on the
ground for logging equip-
ment to operate on.
Making the forest
safer
The approximately 2,110
acres of timberland along 11
miles of the Lostine River is
being thinned of hazard trees
and underbrush to make the
area safer for recreationists
and residents of the Lostine
Canyon. The hazard trees
appear the greatest threat to
public safety, the experts said
Thursday during an inter-
view in the canyon.
“The Forest Service
spends an abundance of time
and effort trying to keep
this corridor open safely
to the public,” said Mark
Moeller, U.S. Forest Service
assistant fire management
officer. “That consists pri-
marily of falling hazard trees
that present a danger to the
public.”
A decision memo by the
Forest Service dated in 2017
included photographs of
those hazard trees that had
fallen on tables in camp-
grounds and across roads,
backing up the Forest Service
claim of the necessity of their
removal.
In addition to tree
removal, the project also
includes installing a heli-
copter pad, re-decking the
bridge at Lake Creek and
removing slash leftover from
the logging work. Some of
the slash will be burned,
while some will be masti-
cated — ground into mulch
for the forest floor. Some
slash will be left for use by
campers as firewood.
“The purpose of this
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“It’s going to look like a park,” said Jim Zacharias, after viewing a section of the Lostine
Corridor Public Safety Project, that had been cleared of dense timber and underbrush
Thursday, Feb. 25, 2021.
project is to reduce the risk of
these forest stands in the cor-
ridor to future insect and dis-
ease impacts (such as falling
trees), which, in turn, reduces
the risk to the people who use
this corridor, the improve-
ments in the corridor to pri-
vate land and the resource in
the canyon including the riv-
erfront,” said Matt Howard,
of the Oregon Department of
Forestry’s Wallowa Unit.
Timber harvest
also matters
In addition to public
safety, the timber harvest
portion of the stewardship
contract is seen as a benefit
both for safety against wild-
fires and economically.
Moeller estimated there
would be a total of 4 mil-
lion board feet of timber har-
vested. Pro Thinning Inc.,
operated by Zacharias’ sons
Tom and Seth Zacharias, has
been contracted to do the
harvesting.
“This number is a ‘total,’
and lumber is only one of
numerous forest products
that may be produced out of
this total,” Moeller said.
The smaller logs are going
to Schmidt’s IBR mill in
Wallowa, while larger “saw
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Project sparked
controversy
But neither recreationists
nor landowners want to see a
wildfire get out of control.
In a Chieftain story from
February 2020, Michael Eng,
of the Lostine Firewise Com-
munity, said approximately
110 properties with 120
structures make up about 15
square miles, or 9,600 acres,
south of Lostine. About 45
landowners are participants
in that Firewise Community.
“Fire is good for the eco-
system but when you put
‘catastrophic’ in front of it,
that’s a whole new formula,”
Howard said.
But the project hasn’t been
without controversy. Earlier
in the process, two environ-
mental groups — Oregon
Wild and the Greater Hells
Canyon Council — went to
court to stop it because they
said they objected to some of
the aspects of the then-pro-
posed project and to some
procedural concerns.
Rob Klavins, Northeast
Oregon field coordinator for
Oregon Wild out of Enter-
prise, said the environmental
groups — and some area resi-
dents who opposed the project
— were in favor of the aspects
involving removing hazard
trees, adding natural fire-
breaks, the helipad and thin-
ning around structures. But
portions appeared to be going
too far.
“Concerned about a
majority who seemed more
about getting logs to mills
than safety concerns,”
Klavins said last week.
He said the procedural
concerns involved including
“really important stake-
holders, ourselves included,”
in the decision-making pro-
cess that he believed were
overlooked.
As a result, the groups
took their objections to court,
ultimately seeing an unfavor-
able decision in the 9th U.S.
Court of Appeals.
Klavins called the project
“a dramatic overreach from
their stated purpose.”
He also said his
group only went to court
reluctantly.
“If they had done this
properly, there were lots of
portions of the project we
could’ve supported,” he said.
Klavins said after they
took it to court, the Forest
Service scaled back the
project. He said he plans to
go up there this week to see
what changes were made.
Project remains
multifaceted
“Everything we’re doing
here on the federal side, it fits
to a ‘T’ into our community
wildfire protection plan …
the common pieces are fitting
together,” Moeller said. “The
primary goal of this project is
public safety. Preventing cat-
astrophic wildfire is a piece
of that, but that’s not the sole
purpose of this project.”
Schmidt agreed that the
hazard trees remain the most
constant danger. He and his
family often recreate in the
area and told of a time last
summer when high winds
added to the danger.
“It was scary as hell; trees
were falling all around us,”
he said, adding that a woman
packing stuff out on her
horse was four hours behind
because she had to cut trees
that fell across the trail.
Jim Zacharias, in his
capacity with Wallowa
Resources, spoke highly of
how the project fits into that
group’s mission.
“Wallowa Resources is
really community oriented.
We really support what this
is designed to do,” he said.
“Plus, it’s supporting the
local economy in creating
jobs. Wallowa Resources is
about the human resource,
too. With Pro Thinning,
there are five people directly
on their crew, plus a half-
dozen truck drivers who
are hauling the logs and
David (Schmidt)’s opera-
tion that has 30-something
employees. Then there’s a
trickle effect: They’re all
eating at M.Crow store and
buying Copenhagen at the
Little Store.”
Zacharias was pleased
with the results he saw
in areas that had been
completed.
“It’s going to look like a
park,” he said.
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could have been catastrophic.
Evacuation routes would
have been clogged, and
access by firefighting crews
blocked.”
Howard, of the ODF,
agreed. Earlier he noted that
it’s not “if” wildfire comes to
the area, but “when.”
“We’re a fire-dependent
ecosystem; we have wildland
fires in this county every
year. The Lostine Corridor is
not free from that,” he said,
noting that “fire-dependent”
means fire helps maintain
forest health.
“As long as summer
thunderstorms keep rolling
through, we’re going to have
fires, and fire’s a normal part
of the ecosystem,” he said.
“When we say ‘fire-depen-
dent,’ we mean our forests
depend on that as part of
their normal cycle.”
logs” will be sold on the open
market. Schmidt said some
are going to Jim Zacharias’
Jay Zee Lumber in Joseph,
some to the Boise-Cas-
cade mill in Elgin, some to
Woodgrain in La Grande and
some to Idaho Forest in Lew-
iston, Idaho.
Nils D. Christoffersen,
executive director of Wal-
lowa Resources, said the
project has been sought for
more than 15 years.
“When I chaired the
county’s first community
wildfire protection plan pro-
cesses back in 2005-06, this
area was one of four areas
that emerged as the highest
priorities based on the risk of
fire, and the potential conse-
quence that a wildfire would
have on people’s lives, our
community and a wide range
of environmental values at
risk,” Christoffersen wrote in
an email. “That risk assess-
ment, and the potential con-
sequences in the Lostine
Corridor, have not changed
— if anything they have
risen. If a fire broke out in the
corridor last summer, when
the parking lots were filled
beyond capacity (from rec-
reationists) and hundreds of
additional cars were parked
along the side of the road, it
To even have a chance to argue
before LUBA, Moyal said, “You
really have to cross the t’s and dots
the i’s.”
The application states the quarry
would create five to seven full-time
jobs. Moyal argued the quarry also
would cost Union County jobs.
The LUBA application would
place 4,550 acres into a conser-
vation easement with the Mule
Deer Foundation to protect habitat
for mule deer and elk. According
to the application, the easement
would allow cattle grazing and
timber management.
Moyal called the easement a
way to make the quarry more pal-
atable for the county planning
commission.
The meeting Monday will be a
public hearing, with the applicant
getting to present arguments for
the quarry, and then public com-
ments for and against. Often, plan-
ning commissions limit the time
for public comment. Moyal said
the last time he spoke against this,
he got three minutes.
But he said he is asking the
commission to allow him more
time to go through the numerous
objections he has collected against
the project. Whether the commis-
sion chair will give him enough
time, he said, he does not know.
If the planning commission
gives its stamp of approval to the
project, Moyal said he is ready to
step up his opposition with more
community organizing and even
fundraising to pay for a lawyer to
take up the fight.
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