Cemex filed a last-minute appeal of last month’s decision by the federal government to cancel the company’s mining contracts in Soledad Canyon.
Back on Aug. 28, Bureau of Land Management officials delivered documents to a representative of Cemex Corp., terminating the Mexican mining conglomerate’s two 10-year contracts to extract sand and gravel from Soledad Canyon.
Cemex has filed a notice of appeal and sought a stay of the recent BLM decision and will “vigorously pursue all of its rights with respect to the project, including a reversal of this improper decision,” said Sara Engdahl, Cemex’s director of communications, in an email.
The formal document, referred to as “a decision” by the BLM, terminates Cemex’s contracts which were issued in 2000, according to the Record of Decision, or ROD, officials said. Cemex is the third corporation to own the contracts; the two others were Southdown and Transit Mixed Concrete.
“Cemex is disappointed with BLM’s arbitrary actions regarding Cemex’s contractual rights in the Soledad Canyon site, particularly in light of the considerable time, energy and expense Cemex has invested working with the many interested parties to find a path forward acceptable to all,” said Engdahl.
The federally-issued contracts called for the mining of 56 million tons of sand and gravel from Soledad Canyon that would have added up to 1,164 truck trips a day to local roads and freeways, as well as causing air quality issues and potential negative impacts to fish, wildlife and plants in the area.
“The Soledad Canyon site contains high-quality aggregate reserves that will play a critical role in supplying a region with intensive and growing aggregate demand, while avoiding the environmental impacts from long distance transportation of aggregates to the region identified by the California Department of Conservation,” said Engdahl.
If the project is approved, residents could be impacted by “excavation activities going on 17 hours per day, six days per week. Processing (would have been) scheduled to take place 16 hours a day and shipping activities (were) expected to take place 24 hours a day,” according to a statement from city officials, in a previous interview.
“Our job is to bring resolution to the issue, and we’re strongly looking to continue our effort to bring this to conclusion and to not have mining in Santa Clarita,” Santa Clarita City Councilwoman Laurene Weste said, in a previous interview.
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5 Comments
Laurene Weste is quoted above as having said that it’s her job “…to not have mining in Santa Clarita.” Note: the Soledad mine is not in Santa Clarita, it’s 2 miles away from the city limit, where nobody lives.
It’s my job to feed my family. I work in construction, and the recession has made it really hard to find work. Many of us just retired early.
LA County said in the final environmental impact report on the CEMEX Soledad project that it would generate 400-500 jobs and $27 million annually in taxes and wages.
Are we really so well off that we can afford to spend $12 million in city funds preventing these jobs from being created? If so, since we’re so bloody rich, can we buy some groceries for my family while we are at it?
If you lived in the Santa Clarita Valley, you might understand what we’re trying to do here. But you don’t.
The implication being that you actually investigated me because you are so disturbed by my truthful comments, and would like to silence me. It’s kind of telling when you don’t engage the facts but instead try to smear and discredit me as a “nonresident.”
Think of it this way: When we run anything remotely negative toward Cemex, we hear complaints from exactly one person. You. Every time we run a story about a court signing off on yet another housing project in this valley, THOUSANDS of our readers yell at us. (As if we could control what the courts do). So tell it to the people who yell at us about the new development. You know. Santa Clarita Valley residents. Meantime, get a grip, get a life, or just go away.
For a moderator, you don’t demonstrate a lot of moderation. Exactly one “person” argues with me. You. Grow a spine. Follow your own policy and use your real name unless you are interjecting facts or actual moderation. You have the entire area above the comment section as your bully pulpit, must you also use the comment section for your weak minded abuse of the truth?