Court to scrutinize asphalt plant OK
(Courtesy photo) This aerial image captured by a drone shows the Sagle gravel pit where an asphalt batch plant is being proposed. Neighboring landowners go before Bonner County commissioners today to appeal the county Planning & Zoning Commission's approval of the batch plant. The meeting starts at 9 a.m. at the Bonner County Administration Building.
SAGLE — Landowners determined to grind a proposed asphalt batching plant proposal to a halt are challenging Bonner County’s controversial approval of the project in 1st District Court.
Citizens Against Linscott/Interstate Asphalt Plant argue in a petition for judicial review that the owners of real property are already or will soon be in danger of injury from noise and air pollution, in addition to increased traffic.
The eight-page petition was filed on Wednesday and represents at least seven couples who would be affected by the Interstate Concreate & Asphalt’s plan to relocate batching operations from Sandpoint to Frank Linscott’s existing gravel pit on the west side of U.S. Highway 95 north of Monarch Road. The site has been used for temporary asphalt batching operations over the years, despite repeated objections from neighboring landowners who say the surface mine and plant operations pose a threat to air and groundwater quality which forces them indoors.
The Bonner County Planning & Zoning Commission granted permanency to the operations in 2018 in what has come to be one of the most enduring and hotly contested land use proposals in recent years.
Landowners appealed P&Z’s approval to the county commission, which affirmed the advisory panel’s decision in January. The landowners moved for the board to reconsider its affirmation of the P&Z decision, the board stood pat in March.
Counsel for the aggrieved landowners argue in the petition that the underlying gravel pit is an unlawful nonconforming use and the attendant asphalt plant operations would essentially enlarge or expand upon the unlawful nonconforming use. The group further argues the ordinance under which the batch plant was approved does not conform with Idaho’s Local Land Use Planning Act, according to court documents.
“The citizens are in immediate danger of and/or have already incurred a distinct and palpable injury in fact which is fairly traceable to the conduct of the board in approving a conditional use permit,” Citizens’ Boise attorney, Gary G. Allen, said in the petition.
In the lag time between the exhaustion of administrative remedies and the commencement of legal proceedings, opponents have been relentlessly turning over rocks which they say expose a bootleg surface mining operation which has colored well outside the lines of an Idaho Department of Lands permit and pierced the aquifer below.
Keith Kinnaird can be reached by email at kkinnaird@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow him on Twitter @KeithDailyBee.