Big Lake Comprehensive Plan tests gravel plan

Dozens of Big Lake residents lined the hallways of the Matanuska Susitna Borough Assembly chambers Tuesday night to let their voices be heard in an argument over a local gravel pit.

The public testimony on the proposed interim materials district was about evenly divided pro and con.

More than forty people testified for or against the project, which would expand a gravel pit on West Lakes Boulevard to allow the owners to be able to remove  750,000 cubic yards of gravel through 2040. If successful, the bid for the interim materials district [IMD] would create a temporary industrial zone near the shores of the popular recreation area.

Contractor Bill Heairet has owned the Lakeside Sand and Gravel pit for about eight years, but the gravel pit itself has been there since 1999.

He told the Assembly that a local pit would provide material for road building and home construction projects at a cheaper rate, since the gravel would not have to be hauled very far. And he said the pit was operating before the current Big Lake Comprehensive Plan existed.

“The first comprehensive plan didn’t address anything. It was go, go go. In 2009 it came out with the rest of this stuff. This was an ongoing extraction site.”

His wife, Helen Heairet, told the Assembly that the Big Lake comprehensive plan was more like a guide that does not set binding rules.

Borough Assemblyman Dick Mayfield, who represents Big Lake, said the gravel pit is strategically located to provide material for a road project around the lake, and announced his intention to vote in favor of the IMD. Mayfield said the Comprehensive Plan “lays out a 2008 vision ” of the community. Mayfield told the Assembly that Big Lake’s comprehensive plan “can say what ever we want it to say.”

But opponents of the plan cited the impacts to the scenic, rural nature of the residences in the area. About 200 properties are within a mile of the proposed gravel project, many of them vacation properties.

Cindy Moore spoke against the gravel plan. Her residence is a little over 300 feet from the pit.

“During a recent conversation with DEC, they told me that Lakeside Sand and Gravel and the current gravel operation is in violation of the Clean Water Act. Because they are one of 29 select industrial sectors that have the potential to be major sources of pollutants of storm water.”

Moore went on to say that a portion of the gravel pit’s 40 acres was stripped of grass and trees, leaving bare surfaces of dirt as a source of runoff pollution.

Many of those community residents opposed to the proposed expansion of the pit cited the projects’ incompatibility with the Big Lake comprehensive plan. Borough planner Mark Whisenhunt said the comprehensive plan protects the beauty and aesthetics and the rural quality of Big Lake

” I know that there is often the opinion that comprehensive plans can be wishy washy or back and forth, and you can interpret it any way you like, and I understand that opinion. But I would like to say that time and again, this [Big Lake] plan specifically tries to protect the beauty and the aesthetics and the rural residential or dispersed residential area out there. In my opinion, there is no ifs or ans with this plan.. it’s [the IMD] is not compatible.”

After two and a half hours of testimony, it took the Assembly only minutes to debate the IMD. Six of the Assembly members sided with the opponents of the gravel pit expansion, and in the end, voted 6 to 1 in favor of a substitute ordinance denying the interim materials district. Mayfield’s vote was the only one in favor of the IMD.