SHINE — A state Shorelines Hearings Board decision approving a sand-and-gravel company’s plan to load barges from a dock on Maury Island was applauded by Fred Hill Materials Inc. officials proposing the “pit-to-pier” gravel mining operation on Hood Canal.
The Hearings Board’s decision reversed King County’s denial of the shoreline permit allowing Glacier Northwest to rebuild a dilapidated pier on Maury Island for loading sand and gravel onto barges.
Glacier Northwest proposes expansion of its existing gravel pit on Maury Island that includes barging from a 400-foot pier.
The gravel will be used in the construction of a third runway at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
A representative of Poulsbo-based Fred Hill Materials said the board’s decision late last week was precedent-setting for the company’s gravel-mining operation proposal southwest of the Hood Canal Bridge in Jefferson County.
“This decision certainly bodes well for the project. Facts do matter,” Fred Hill Project Manager Dan Baskins said Monday.
“The Shorelines Hearings Board sorted through the huff-and-puff propaganda of opponents and delivered a ruling based on facts, environmental science and the law.
“Fact is, marine transportation is safe and a huge winner for the environment. It takes thousands of trucks off overcrowded roads, highways and bridges.”
Four-mile conveyor
Fred Hill’s pit-to-pier project would build a four-mile conveyor belt from the Shine Pit to an 1,100-foot pier that would be built on Hood Canal.
Baskins said the board “obviously sees the logic of using the waterways to transport mass product . . . sand and gravel is not something to be afraid of, and this does set a strong precedent” for shipping sand and gravel.
Opponents of Fred Hill’s proposed project on Monday expressed some disappointment in the Maury Island decision.
But a lawyer for the environmental group Hood Canal Coalition downplayed the decision, saying “there are difference facts and different law” in the two cases.
Seattle attorney Mickey Gendler said he saw “significant differences” between Fred Hill’s project: one being a new pier would be built by Hill; the other being potential environmental effects on oxygen-depleted Hood Canal waters.
“With the Hood Canal, it being in somewhat of a crisis, it needs protection from additional pollution sources,” Gendler said.