The battle ended before it even began.
The developers behind the controversial quarry-cum-neighborhood
project in northwest Gilroy said they have abandoned their plans,
citing vocal residential opposition as the main reason.
The battle ended before it even began.
The developers behind the controversial quarry-cum-neighborhood project in northwest Gilroy said they have abandoned their plans, citing vocal residential opposition as the main reason.
“We never thought there would be as much outcry as there was, and when we listened to (neighbors’) concerns, we very quickly made the decision to pull our application,” said Verne Freeman, president of Freeman Associates and operator of Freeman Quarry south of Gilroy. “The lesson we’ve learned here – up and down California – is the fact that there are so many more houses now in what used to be agricultural areas, which is where quarries typically happen. Now there are not many areas without neighborhood impacts.”
Ken Pauley lives on Burchell Road, near the proposed quarry site, and was central in organizing the Web-based, grassroots effort that united hundreds of neighbors and concerned residents. An online petition protesting the quarry had 230 signatures from mostly Gilroy residents, but some lived as far away as Cupertino, San Jose and Mountain View. One resident even traveled to Sacramento to brief state representatives on the project.
It was worth all the work, said Pauley, who was in Florida for business Wednesday evening when he heard the news.
“This is fantastic news … I think a lot of people will be jumping up and down,” said Pauley, referring to his wife, Chris, who excitedly jumped at the news outside the couple’s home Wednesday evening. A banner reading, “Quarry here? No way!” hung from the Pauley’s verandah railing, and a separate yard sign reading the same stood outside their white wooden fence. Farther away, another banner rippled in the wind, strung to a phone pole across the street from the quarry site on Watsonville Road.
“We were planning a small neighborhood meeting this weekend,” Ken Pauley added, “but now I think it’ll be more of a celebration than a meeting.”
The developers had until Thursday to resubmit their application with the Santa Clara County Planning Department, but they let the application expire, according to Santa Clara County Senior Planner Gary Rudholm. The next steps would have been an environmental impact report and public meetings.
While the applicants listened mainly to residential outcry, they also listened to Santa Clara County Supervisor Don Gage, who said he cautioned the applicants against the quarry Wednesday.
“I told them it would be a very difficult, uphill battle that would cost a lot of money, and in the end, they still may get a ‘no’ answer,” Gage said, referring to the county planning commission vote that would have succeeded the public meetings. “If it was me, I told them I wouldn’t push it. There’s a scenic highway out there and environmental concerns since the site is close to a stream with steelhead.”
Controversy emerged last month when the residents on and around Burchell and Watsonville roads discovered the county was evaluating an application by San Jose developer Case Swenson and Freeman. The former owns 135 acres of largely undeveloped land worth about $3.6 million along Watsonville Road and Uvas Creek, and 15 years from now, he envisioned a quiet lake rimmed with houses. To get the 40-foot-deep, 32-acre lake, though, Swenson said the county told them they technically had to operate a quarry in the meantime – hence Freeman’s involvement.
“It was not our intention to create any animosity with our neighbors. Our plan was to create a neighborhood with a lake. Having a short-term quarry was going to benefit the county of Santa Clara, as we could have provided much needed gravel resources instead of getting our supply from out of the country,” Swenson said in a written statement Thursday.
As the application came together throughout the past two years, however, a laundry list of local, state and federal concerns emerged.
County documents expressed specific worries about water quality, endangered steelhead fish, traffic, noise and air pollution that could affect natural habitats and historical artifacts from Gilroy’s first settlers, the Ohlone Indians. As for traffic, Watsonville Road and Highway 152 are two-lane roads unaccustomed to 10,000 industrial trucks a year hauling gravel away each work day at a rate of about one every 15 minutes or so, according to county figures and one resident’s calculations. Swenson and Freeman said they had redesigned their application to address these concerns – and planned to submit such to the county Thursday – but the residents ended up taking the day.
While Ken Pauley said he and others would keep their eyes peeled to make sure the quarry project does not quietly re-emerge, Swenson – who spent about $20,000 on the expired application – said that he will look for future development that will benefit the community. For his part, Freeman said he had no plans to restart the effort or create a new quarry elsewhere despite material shortages throughout the Bay Area.
Freeman has operated Freeman Quarry two miles south of Gilroy on U.S. 101 since 2000. The hard rock quarry there produces one million tons of product each year and will last through 2017, Freeman said. The average life of a quarry is about 50 years, Freeman added, and the abandoned project would have produced about 300,000 tons of material a year for seven to 10 years.
Now that the project’s gone, however, what are residents to do with the sundry banners and bumper stickers they designed and purchased?
“Well, we still don’t want a quarry here,” said Bob Crane, another Burchell Road resident.
