As Clark County continues to grow, so too will the demand for aggregate materials — the sand, gravel and various sizes of rock needed for construction.
“We don’t have a good inventory of operating mine sites,” said Jose Alvarez of the county’s planning department.
Backers of two proposed mines — Granite Construction’s site in the Chelatchie Bluff Mineral Lands and a site owned by Judith Zimmerly in Washougal — claim the county’s existing mining operations won’t be able to meet demand. But that’s a matter of dispute.
Nick Massie of Vancouver-based builder Rotschy Inc. said the additional gravel, rock and sand from those and other sites will be needed.
“That’s going to be able to take some pressure off of the Storedahl pit to allow material to get down to the local Clark County area,” he said of the Chelatchie mine.
Both sites have faced fierce opposition from local residents. Groups like Friends of the Columbia Gorge, Friends of Clark County and the Sierra Club have fought to keep the mines out of environmentally sensitive areas like the Columbia River Gorge, taking their fight to the state’s Growth Management Hearings Board and the courts.
“My research shows that we have plenty of aggregate internal and external for at least the next 40 years with current supplies,” Chelatchie resident John Nanney said.
Recently, a complaint was filed against the Washougal Pit for conducting operations without the required permits. That complaint is scheduled to be heard by the Columbia River Gorge Commission on Jan. 14.
Demand for materials
By 2045, Clark County’s population is expected to climb to 718,000 residents, a 36.7 percent increase from the current estimated population of 525,000 people.
These new residents will need new single-family homes, mobile homes, condominiums and apartment buildings, as well as new streets, sidewalks, industrial buildings, offices, stores, parking structures and more — all of which relies on the concrete made from sand, gravel and crushed rock mined here and elsewhere.
According to county records, 10 quarries are currently active in Clark County. The most active of these are the Livingston Mountain quarry south of Camp Bonneville, which is owned and operated by Tower Rock Products, a division of Tapani Inc.; Yacolt Mountain Quarry in Amboy, owned by J.L. Storedahl & Sons; and Daybreak Quarry in Battle Ground, also owned by Storedahl.
Others — including the English, Fisher and Section 30 mine sites in east Vancouver — have ceased operations since the state Department of Natural Resources last completed an aggregate resource inventory for Clark County in 2005. Some of the former mine sites now are in the state-mandated reclamation process, while others are being developed for residential, commercial or industrial uses.
Amy Rudko, aggregate mapper for the Department of Natural Resources, said the state has no plans to update the inventory.
“Since geology is relatively static, the maps don’t require frequent updates,” Rudko said.
Meeting demand
Not all mines are created equal. Some, like the one in Section 30, primarily produced sand and gravel. Yacolt Mountain produces crushed rock. Builders need a variety of sources to meet their construction needs. For some things, like building roads, local resources are limited.
“We need to use crushed rock for that. The Yacolt Mountain quarry is basically the only one left in the Clark County area,” Massie said. “And they have a trip regulation, so you get trip permits per day. Sometimes you have to wait a little bit longer.”
While the Department of Natural Resources inventory does differentiate between bedrock aggregate sources (intact rock that must be blasted for extraction) and sand and gravel deposits, Rudko said, it does not differentiate between types of rock or mineralogy. That is the kind of information Clark County Councilor Glen Yung said he would like to have.
To better understand the types and amounts of aggregate resources available in the county, Yung and Councilor Sue Marshall suggested during recent council meetings that Clark County conduct its own inventory.
“I still have a lot of information that I need,” Yung said. “Everybody expects that concrete truck to be ready for them when they need concrete. Everybody expects there to be roads. The truth is that if we don’t open or we don’t have enough mines that are actually producing at the moment, we do have a shortage and we do have to import from outside the county.”
Without additional aggregate sources, Massie said, builders will have difficulty delivering the affordable housing that the state has mandated.
“Every time the rock price goes up, then it affects affordable housing,” Massie said. “And the Growth Management Act, of course, says that we need to provide resources for this material around our area.”
Proposed sites, like the Chelatchie and Washougal mines, could help meet the demand for aggregate materials. The mined materials would still have to be transported by either truck or rail, a big concern for those living near the mines, but builders said it’s better than some other options.
“The ports are kind of limited on receiving any rock at this point. … Bringing rock in by barge is an option,” Massie said. “However, it’s a limited option, and it’s going to cost quite a bit more money than locating the rock locally.”
Future needs
Although the state provides information on existing mineral resources lands, as well as overseeing reclamation activities, it is up to the county and cities to plan for future needs.
“The (Growth Management Act) tasks the counties’ cities and towns with ensuring that mineral resource lands of long-term significance are protected through land-use zoning,” said Rian Skov, chief reclamation geologist for the Department of Natural Resources.
In December, the Clark County Council directed staff to include the site-specific requests the planning department has received in the growth plan update currently in process. This includes 22 new requests for surface mining zoning, most of which are in northern rural areas of the county.
The county is considering hiring a consultant to help evaluate the requests, which will have to come back before the council in 2025 for review and approval, Alvarez said.
Yung said there’s another benefit to having mineral resources available in the county, which is more control over any environmental impacts related to mining than if resources are mined elsewhere. But residents living near the proposed mining sites, like those in Washougal and Chelatchie, say the impacts from the mines are too costly, especially in environmentally sensitive areas. Weighing those costs won’t be easy, Yung said.
“It’s a tough thing. I just want it to be balanced. I want us to be able to source our own material here,” Yung said. “I don’t want there to be a glut of it to where we’re exporting it, by any means.”
Alvarez said the county would also have to hire a consultant to do a resource survey, but funds for that work were not included in the budget or approved by the council. Even if the county hired consultants, he said, getting the information from the privately owned mining operations could be a challenge.
“It is going to require some sampling of land. I don’t know how we would get access to that,” Alvarez said.
The Columbian’s calls to Granite Construction, Zimmerly, and Storedahl & Sons were not returned.
