[Vision2020] Banned uses in the Groundwater Protection Zone Part 1

[Phil Nisbet]

One of the biggest failures in the current planning round in what has been 
termed the Groundwater Protection Zone surrounding Moscow is the false 
assumption that by returning a NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) set of 
regulations, a higher environmental purpose can and will be served.  
Further, it is assumed that by banning uses in the rural area outside of 
Moscow, the area will remain as a pristine rural green belt for the 
community.

Before people jump on that bandwagon, I suggest that they debate and 
consider the wider implications of what the regulations as proposed mean.

5.02.07 Prohibited Uses
1. Feedlots, dairies requiring a commercial shipper’s license, or other 
types of similar year round/continuous confined animal management 
operations.
2. Sanitary or industrial landfills
3. Industrial wastewater treatment
4. Mining, refining, processing and/or storage of mineral resources 
including, but not limited to: asphalt hot mix plants, ore mills, rock 
crushers and concrete batch plants.
5. Processing and/or storage of toxic materials, poisonous gases and/or 
radioactive materials.


First I will address item 4 since it’s an industry I know well.

There are no metals resources or ore deposits of a toxic or dangerous nature 
in the Groundwater Protection Zone.  Nobody is going to come to the area 
surrounding Moscow and build an open pit heap leach gold mining operation or 
a giant copper mine with possible acid mine drainage or potentials for off 
site leakage of process chemicals.  So any ban on mining or minerals 
processing is directed at calling for no mining of industrial minerals that 
are inert and a ban on the storage of those types of minerals.

So what are the industrial minerals that these folks are trying to ban and 
why would somebody mine them here or store them here?

Sand and Gravel, crushed basalt, clay, cement and a series of what are 
termed place valued minerals that go into bulk construction and industrial 
applications are what exist in the Groundwater Protection Zone.  So what is 
being banned is production and storage of construction materials that are 
inert and are not toxic.  And the regulations make it illegal not just to 
mine these products outside of the city limit; they make it illegal to store 
them.

Who does this regulation impact?  I think that most people immediately think 
that they are trying to put a stop to giant evile mining companies, but the 
reality is that this regulation is actually focused on small local minerals 
providers, on landscaping businesses, on construction businesses and similar 
folks.  No giant outside company is going to enter the Moscow area to mine 
sand and gravel or try to enter the crushed rock market.

So, how will these impact landscapers?  They will not be authorized to store 
decorative stone, sand, top soil or other mineral products for just one 
example.  This is very interesting, since the move also exists to require 
xeriscaping, low water use yard development, which is heavy on the use of 
river rock, gravel, shaped decorative stone and cement.

Construction requires the use of mineral products and construction related 
businesses store minerals on their properties as a matter of course.  
Storage of bags of sand or cement will now be legal in the city limits, but 
not once you cross the line into the rural county areas.  The average house 
uses 150 tons of construction minerals and the yard for that house uses even 
more and that does not include any other building or roads or other 
construction.

The addition of a ban on Asphalt plants and cement plants are obviously 
aimed at paved road construction and repair.

All of this impacts providers of these materials, but how does it impact the 
average citizen?

The answer to that is pretty simple, it costs everybody in the area more to 
live here and materially degrades the regions environment.

Just a simple example exists in sand and gravel used by every single 
resident of Moscow.  Most people do not realize that though our area has 
numerous sand and gravel deposits, our source for that material comes from 
100 miles away, trucked here from along the banks of the Salmon migration 
route on the Snake River.  The town’s annual consumption of 250,000 tons of 
sand and gravel is the highest priced such material in the State of Idaho, 
since it is not produced in the local area, but must be trucked long 
distances.  In Idaho Falls or Boise, the price of Sand and Gravel is from 
$6.50-7.00 per ton, but here in Moscow an average ton of sand and gravel 
will cost between $10-18.00.

So the community absorbs a collective cost of over two million dollars to 
avoid having a plant in the local area, but by doing so, they also burn 
large amounts of fuel to move that material into the area and transfer the 
place where the materials are taken from lands which will have little impact 
on regional environmental quality, to ground right beside the migration 
route of ESA listed species.  Half a million gallons of fuel will be burned 
dragging that sand and gravel up here for the use of this community, by 
people who love to scream that they oppose fossil fuel waste.  Silt will not 
be dropped on dry Palouse hillsides; it will be placed next to the River 
habitat of ESA listed fish.

But the community gains the wonderful advantage of being able to say, they 
have no mines in the Moscow area.  Out of sight and out of mind, the actual 
costs to the environment can be safely hidden and the NIMBY crowd can feel 
they have little or no impact on the planet, since the operations and the 
distribution of minerals they use every day are safely out of sight.  And 
the warm and fuzzy feeling that saying that our community has banned mines 
and minerals has to be worth several million dollars, doesn’t it?


I will deal with some of the other banned uses on following posts, but would 
love to see debate on the subject on this list.

Phil Nisbet

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