PORT TOWNSEND — The Western Washington Growth Management Hearings Board has given Jefferson County the go-ahead with the permit process to allow Fred Hill Materials to expand its gravel operations in the Hood Canal area.
The Hearings Board found Jefferson County in full compliance with state growth management and environmental regulations when it approved a comprehensive plan to designate a 690-acre area near Shine as a mineral resource overlay earlier this year.
The compliance ruling will now allow the company to continue its permit application process, which would lead to gravel mining expansion.
Opponents of expansion continued to say that the project is the first step toward Fred Hill’s controversial “pit to pier” project.
The contentious project would include a four-mile rock conveyor from the gravel pit to an 1,100-foot pier that would be built on Hood Canal.
Barges and freighters would be loaded from the pier and transit the canal to Puget Sound and elsewhere.
Coalition’s concerns
The Hood Canal Coalition, an alliance of area residents and environmental groups, have tried to block both the mineral resource overlay plan and the pit-to-pier project.
In response, a Fred Hill spokesman labeled these concerns as personal agenda.
“Although we’re happy with the Hearings Board decision,” Fred Hill Materials Project Manager Dan Baskins said in a written statement following Friday’s announcement, “it’s unfortunate that personal and political agendas have cost the taxpayers of Jefferson County thousands and thousands of dollars in needless litigation.”
