CAPE GEORGE — Neighbors Against Asphalt Batching will take their battle against Lakeside Industries to the Washington State Supreme Court.
The citizen activist group has long maintained that the company didn’t have permission to operate an asphalt plant at its Cape George quarry as far back as 1990.
But Lakeside Industries won a Court of Appeals decision in May that concluded that Jefferson County had no land use law in effect from 1989 to 1991. The Appeals Court said because Lakeside started operation of an asphalt plant in 1990, its land use had to be considered “grandfathered.”
Land use attorney David Mann of Seattle, representing the citizens group, said he will ask the Supreme Court to answer the question: “What happens in the interim between effective laws?
In this case, Lakeside constructed the facility and claimed it was grandfathered. Where’s the public policy in that?”
Mann said the Lakeside Industries case is difficult, but he hopes to persuade the Supreme Court justices that it has far-reaching implications for all land-use laws throughout Washington state.
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