Just off a dirt road on a late March afternoon, the sun was streaming through the trees and birds were singing at Mark Porter’s Whatcom County house — the place his children, now in their 30s, have always called home.
Porter has lived in his house, in the far reaches of the county near Peaceful Valley, for more than 30 years. He spends his days in his workshop and his garden, saying hi to the neighbors and their kids and dogs.
Now, he’s afraid he might lose it to a proposed 70-acre hard rock mine.
“At some point, we’ll be left with no other choice but to sell,” he said last week. “I don’t know where else we would go.”
The Ranch Quarry Surface Mine, proposed by Cowden Inc., would create a 70-acre hard rock pit over a 108-acre parcel in the valley, surrounded by mountains, neighbors and farms. Cowden Inc. President Brent Cowden said the pit will provide necessary gravel and rocks for future development and safety projects like flood levees without disrupting existing homes and the community.
Application documents from Cowden indicate the mine will “not have any significant impacts on public health, safety or natural resources.” But neighbors say the mine could be devastating, flattening property values and creating health hazards for residents, environmental hazards for local salmon populations, and noise pollution from gravel removal and 50 rock trucks each day.
“I understand they’re concerned,” Cowden said last week. “This is all regulated. It’s all done per code and per industry standards. We’ll be a good neighbor.”
The site, which will have roughly 38 acres of buffer area, is already zoned as “rural forestry” and resource lands in the Whatcom County Comprehensive Plan, and is owned by a private land owner, from whom Cowden, Inc. plans to lease the space.
The plan also designates the area as “low density” and as a “potential sand & gravel resource.”
“The area’s intended purpose is to be mined,” Cowden said. “And this is a resource that we need in the community. There’s tons of concerns about floods and building levees, but there’s not enough rock in the county currently to meet the need. This will be a valuable resource once it’s permitted.”
There are several other gravel mines in Whatcom County, but only two are considered “active,” according to county documents. And, Cowden said, those mines are quickly deplenishing.
Dozens of neighbors, many of whom just found out about the development in mid-March, say the 100-acre space is not appropriate for quarry development.
“On paper, this [proposal] is good to go because it’s an established mining community,” said Andrew Clarke, one of the leaders of a new neighborhood group opposing the pit. “We all live out here because we enjoy the community, the quality of life … The most important thing now is trying to figure out a way to not have them open up a new gravel mine.”
Neighbors of the proposed site are in the process of forming a new nonprofit to oppose the facility. The group picked the name HOME: Homeowners Opposed to Mine Expansion, Clarke said.
At a gathering of concerned residents March 22, Kyle Zandbergen holds up his fingers to describe how little room on each side of a lane he has while driving with a 20-foot trailer behind him, to show how narrow the roads would be for gravel-laden trucks coming and going from a proposed quarry near Sumas. (Andy Bronson/Cascadia Daily News) About a dozen members of the group met last Wednesday to discuss the proposal, and steps to take at the county and state level to raise awareness of their concerns. The group has retained legal counsel, and is in the process of developing a website.
Concerns are threefold: environmental habitat, destruction of homes and ways of life, and questions about ownership.
Of particular concern is local fish-bearing creeks and streams, including Saar Creek, which supports salmon and trout populations.
“We need to protect the salmon in this creek,” said Jim Cline, a member of the Nooksack Indian Tribe whose residence is near the proposed mine site. “We’ve been here over 20 years and our property abuts this … We need to do everything we can.”
Cline’s wife, Robin, expressed similar concerns.
“Salmon are very, very protected, and all of us know that Saar Creek has salmon in it, and it also has steelhead and trout,” she said during last week’s HOME meeting. “I think we are all a little on the scared side of what’s going to happen.”
The site is surrounded on all sides by homes and farms, and many of them, like Clarke’s and Porter’s, rely on shallow wells for water. The water in their wells runs through the proposed mining site, and concerns that chemicals and runoff will harm their water, or worse, dry up the well entirely, are significant.
“We could lose our wells,” Porter said last week. “It’s offensive to have to go to these lengths to save our homes.”
Without water, Porter said his property value would plunge.
Andrew Clarke stands on a widened road where gravel trucks are expected to pass by his Sumas-area home, right, up to 50 times a day. Clarke and residents near a proposed quarry site met to discuss how to proceed in opposing the possible site. (Andy Bronson/Cascadia Daily News) Other neighbors report concerns about uprooting their farms, businesses and family homes.
Most have been in their homes for decades, and many take issue with the “sparse” population designation.
“They might be affecting only 30 people, but those 30 people they’re affecting, they’re affecting drastically,” said Kyle Zandbergen, another neighbor who attended Wednesday’s meeting. “This is our livelihood. This is our lives. This is our heritage and our next generation.”
Every neighbor who met Wednesday said if the mine goes in, they’d have to move. But where would they go, some wondered aloud, and who would buy their homes with no water and a major pit in the backyard?
“I would have never bought my property out here to begin with if I knew this was a possibility,” Zandbergen added. “I wouldn’t have put five years worth of sweat equity into the place, building it.”
Clarke agreed. Though he moved to the area a few years ago, his wife was born at a house down the road from their current residence, which lies just 50 yards from the proposed route for the gravel trucks. The proposal calls for 25 truckloads — 50 in-and-out trips each day — during full operation.
“We have deep ties to the community, and we have a 5-year-old daughter that I want to raise out here, too,” he said. “I don’t want to subject my kid to diesel fumes and living in an industrial wasteland.”
Neighbors are also concerned about ownership and management of the property. Many worried the facilities would be managed by a Swiss-French corporation, with no ties to the community. Cowden said that’s not the case.
The confusion with ownership relates to an early 2022 business sale, when Cowden’s facilities split. Cowden, Inc., now owned by Brent, separated from Cowden Gravel & Ready Mix. The latter company is now under ownership of the Holcim Limited company, while Cowden, Inc. remains local. Holcim Limited has no role in Cowdin Inc. or the project, Cowden said.
Over the coming weeks and months, the proposal will undergo review from the Whatcom County Planning Department before the county recommends approval or disapproval to a county hearing examiner, which could take additional months.
The county planner assigned to the project, Sam McDaniel, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
A public comment period, initially slated to end March 27, will be rescheduled because of an error in the notification documents. The second comment period will launch over the next week or so, according to county staff.
This mine fight comes on the heels of a similar project proposal in Skagit County, where the Central Samish Valley Neighbors have been fighting against a 51-acre gravel mine proposal since 2016. The group finally received a formal hearing in August last year, though the final decision has not been made available yet.
