Auburn Dispute: It's The (Gravel) Pits -- City, Tribe, Longtime Company Tangled In Complicated Debate

AUBURN - It's not an elegant problem.

It's a muddy hole in the ground.

But there's a reason the Miles Sand and Gravel pit has captivated townspeople here, baffled bureaucrats and stymied politicians.

Behind the intricacies of the pit's alleged permit violations and pending transfer to a nearby tribe, there rages a battle for control of Auburn's future.

And at the center of this fray lies gravel extraction, an important industry because of its use in concrete. It's an operation that is highly visible and fraught with problems, yet so banal it often escapes notice.

The wrangle over the Miles pit is an example of a broader crisis facing the state's massive gravel business. Especially in Western Washington, the delicate balance between protecting this important industry and protecting the environment has gone awry.

Heightened environmental awareness is now vying with a growing demand for gravel in a battle for control of pits like the one in Auburn - a sprawling, 170-acre expanse of erosion cutting across the hillside just a few blocks from downtown.

Washington's gravel pits turn out eight tons of gravel a year for every man, woman and child in the state. For every cubic yard of pavement you drive over, there's a pile of gravel - gravel that has been somewhere nearby, washed, sorted and loaded into trucks.

Sand and gravel are used everywhere - in practically every economic activity that involves construction. There are 79 surface mines in King County alone, according to state Department of Natural Resources officials - 1,750 statewide.

"We couldn't live like this without them," said Jim LeBret, Portland area geologist with the minerals office of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).

If you live in a building with a driveway or foundation, you've paid for gravel. If you've paid taxes, you've paid for gravel. State highway and county road departments are among the mines' best customers.

Discreet, independent and often powerful, gravel entrepreneurs offer a lesson to anyone who thinks you have to invent something clever to make money. The ultimate capitalists, they've turned the very ground under our feet into hard cash - $200 million of it in statewide sales in 1990, according to recent statistics.

One phrase often repeated in industry circles is, "Owning a gravel mine is better than a gold mine."

Put simply, communities and gravel pits need each other. But they make uncomfortable bedfellows.

Nowhere is that better illustrated than in Auburn. Last summer, even as the city's planning director was fretting over Miles' failure to renew its city permit on time, public-works officials down the hall were buying the firm's products to rebuild Main Street.

The new orange sidewalks of which city leaders are so proud are a direct result of cheap, plentiful gravel from the source of their biggest headache.

Since last spring, the city has been trying to force the Miles firm to meet city standards for renewal of its 10-year operating permit. Auburn recently ordered a temporary halt to mining in the pit, pending completion of a lengthy study of the environmental damage there, including the possible undercutting of slopes, which officials contend could cause landslides.

The order came on the eve of an even greater threat to Auburn's authority than the firm's alleged disregard for its permit: Sometime after Feb. 18, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs is expected to convert the Miles pit into a permanent federal trust for the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe - in effect, snatching it from Auburn's regulatory grip.

An agreement struck between the tribe and the firm will allow Miles to continue mining, this time under the terms of a lease and tribal permit rather than a city permit.

Miles officials have maintained they have not violated the city permit. They say the city is just tougher than it used to be. Although city officials have called the deal with the tribe a ploy to dodge regulations, the pit's operators say they've been cornered by hostile neighbors.

"I'm not in the greatest position," said Lisa Kittilsby, who runs the firm with her father, Frank Miles. "I've got the city on one side, the Muckleshoots on the other . . . and they might be tougher than the city."

The site of the Miles mine was once a wooded hillside where tribal members hunted, a part of the tribe's reservation mistakenly sold in the early half of the century.

The Muckleshoots successfully pressed a claim to the pit against the Miles Sand and Gravel Co. late last year, arriving at an out-of-court settlement likely to restore the pit to tribal trust land.

As such, the pit would be jointly governed by the tribe, the BIA and the federal Bureau of Land Management.

That means the city is likely to lose considerable control over the dominant feature on its horizon.

Although the details of the Auburn dispute are complicated, the theme is a familiar one. Dave Norman, chief reclamation officer for the state Department of Natural Resources, said the Miles pit illustrates a classic problem with gravel companies, which are finding it increasingly difficult to co-exist with the communities that support them.

The result? Legal disputes involving control of pits have become commonplace in recent years as miners invoke state and federal laws to supersede local controls.

The Miles imbroglio is likely to grow into such a full-fledged court battle.

City officials have hinted they will take legal action to retain permit authority, despite the tribe's pending control of the site.

At stake is citizens' ability to control their surroundings, contends Steve Lancaster, Auburn planning director.

Auburn wants to retain control of the site because gravel pits pose a moderate threat to ground-water quality and require detailed planning for restoring the land once mining is complete.

But the Muckleshoots bristle at Auburn's claims that it should be the environmental steward of the pit. Had the land remained in tribal control, it never would have been dug up in the first place, said Dan Stark, economic development coordinator for the Muckleshoots.

At issue is which set of regulations should apply to the pit. It's a question being asked more often as gravel miners struggle to hold their ground in the face of encroaching urbanization.

"There aren't many places where people want to have a gravel pit," said geologist LeBret of the BIA. "They've used up all that's easy to get, and we are getting more careful about where we dig holes."

In the Puget Sound area, the crisis has become especially acute as land becomes scarce and a growing population is squeezed against expanding gravel pits.

Towering sand- and gravel-processing plants spewing rocks are not easy to live near, as dust-weary neighbors of the Miles pit attest.

And gravel miners are not inclined to retire gracefully to less-populated areas. By nature, their gravel supply must be close to where people live and build.

"It's heavy," explained DNR's Norman. Each extra mile gravel is transported adds an average of 25 cents to its per-ton cost, he said.

Add to all this the fact that current regulation of gravel pits is Byzantine and messy.

So confusing and conflicting are the laws and myriad court decisions that few seem to have a good understanding of them.

The Legislature is trying to clear things up. This week, the state Senate is expected to consider a bill aimed at defining the roles of state and local governments in regulating the pits.

If passed, the bill would not help settle the Miles dispute because the jurisdictional question involves the federal government, not the state.

But, in essence, the problem is a similar one - a balance must be struck between the interests of the pit's nearest neighbors and the interests of a business that's not likely to stage a willing retreat.

LeBret predicts that in the end, both the tribe and the city will have to recognize the other's responsibility over the pit and forge a rough compromise, just as the Legislature is attempting to do now on a statewide scale.

The challenge is a sticky one, LeBret said. "But it goes on all the time."