Proposed gravel pits off I-90 criticized

NORTH BEND

They called the environmental review of huge gravel pits proposed near North Bend off Interstate 90 sloppy, incomplete and even devious.

Few of more than 30 people who spoke last night at a public meeting on the draft environmental-impact statement at Mount Si High School in Snoqualmie had anything good to say about the 275-acre project.

Redmond-based Cadman wants to extract gravel there for about 25 years, with trucks making about 450 round trips a day.

Several speakers were critical of what they said was a lack of information in the environmental review on the noise, traffic, water and other problems the project could pose. They asked why there wasn't a full explanation of the concrete and asphalt plants planned at the site or of the location of a conveyor belt, waterline or road.

Most of the 70 people at the meeting live near the project site, and many opponents have organized as the Cascade Gateway Foundation.

Jacki Taylor, a foundation member, said she "couldn't believe the number of times the words `no impacts' and `temporary' appear in the review."

Cadman's plans involve two locations - a 33-acre lower site at an existing gravel pit and a 240-acre parcel on property recently logged on the Grouse Ridge plateau - at the Edgewick interchange of I-90.

The lower site is unsettling to Buddhist Grandmaster Lu Sheng Yen, whose 40-acre estate overlooks the lower site.

Before the meeting, Lama Hon Lai Vui said the pit runs counter to feng-shui principles, the notion that a location's natural environment can influence the fortune of its inhabitants.

Rich McCullough, superintendent of the Snoqualmie Valley School District, is concerned about plans to build elementary and middle schools on a 41-acre tract on North Fork Road, about a quarter-mile from the proposed gravel pits.

"We've had a good dialogue with Cadman over traffic and other impacts on the site, and we thought they were responding to our concerns," McCullough said.

But, he added, the project's impact statement says that Cadman, under the State Environmental Policy Act, is not required to mitigate effects on future school sites.

"We knew that, but we were led to believe that they would work with us," McCullough said.

One speaker who supported the project, Steve Carter, said that he works for Cadman and that his young children are the fourth generation to be brought up in the upper valley.

"I would rather live near a gravel pit than see another Snoqualmie Ridge here," he said.

But another longtime resident, Bruce Milliman, said living near the old King County gravel pit off North Fork Road near the Cadman project was a nightmare. He lived there between 1965 and 1992.

Commenting on noise from a rock crusher at that pit, he said, "It was like living next door to two iron dragons . . . always screeching and thumping." Milliman's family still owns 80 acres near the sites.

Written comments on the project must be sent by Aug. 11 to Gordon Thomson, King County DEIS, 900 Oakesdale Ave. S.W., Renton, WA 98055-1215.