A mining company with contracts to extract more than 50 million tons of aggregate from Soledad Canyon is now pursuing an appeal for its right to build a mine on 500 acres just east of the city of Santa Clarita.
Santa Clarita officials have feared for years that such an operation could irrevocably alter the bucolic nature surrounding the community’s eastern borders.
The city has spent millions over the past three decades purchasing open space in order to preserve a “green belt” around the Santa Clarita Valley that connects the area with paseos and hiking trails.
However, not long after the city was formed, a predecessor of Cemex, a Mexican-based international mining conglomerate, purchased the rights to mine in Soledad Canyon for materials vital to homes and road infrastructure needed for the area’s future growth.
Those contracts sat dormant for decades.
Now the mining company has filed a legal appeal seeking further review of the State Water Resources Control Board’s decision not to allow a challenge of the agency’s recent decision about permits the miners are seeking to use water from the Santa Clara River.
“We are not surprised that CEMEX is appealing this decision,” said Santa Clarita Mayor Cameron Smyth, in a statement sent via email. “This is just the latest step, in what has been a multiple decadeslong battle. The City of Santa Clarita advocated for the Water Board to re-notice CEMEX’s application, and we will continue to stay vigilant and take whatever steps available to protect our community and prevent this grave threat to our environment and quality of life.”
Original plans
Per Cemex’s notice of appeal filed last week, “in 1991, the petitioner’s predecessor-in-interest filed an application to appropriate water for its Soledad Canyon Project, which was a proposal to develop a sand and gravel mine on an approximately 500-acre site in the unincorporated Soledad Canyon area of Los Angeles County.”
The plans call for the mining operation to use approximately 322 acre-feet per year from the Santa Clara River, which was the purpose of the permit application for a beneficial use. For comparison, an average home uses about 0.4 to 0.5 acre-feet in a year, or about 150,000 gallons, and a typical backyard pool holds between 18,000 and 30,000 gallons.
The State Water Resources Control Board then noticed the applications in May 1993, according to Cemex, which started the protest period.
But the plans lay dormant for more than 25 years, as a bedroom community was constructed in the region surrounding the desired mining site east of Santa Clarita.
After Cemex notified the appropriate agencies it intended to move forward with the mine, State Water Resources Control Board Executive Director Eileen Sobeck notified Cemex “that she intends to re-notice the application; triggering a new protest period” in August 2023, according to the appeal.
Legislative wins and losses
The appeal notes that Santa Clarita, which was a 6-year-old city in 1993, failed to file a protest during the original protest period.
The appeal also notes that two subsequent efforts by the city to have the river permit applications re-noticed, in 2004 and 2016, were rejected by the State Water Board, “noting that Petitioner had not requested an increase in the amount of water for the project and the circumstances surrounding the application remained unchanged,” according to Cemex’s arguments.
Sobeck noted how much things have changed for the affected community since 1993 in her reasoning for the re-notice:
“Since that time, the circumstances of affected downstream water users or other interested persons have changed. For example, many of the entities that have filed protests against the application no longer exist due to changes in property ownership and other factors. In addition, multiple entities which did not file protests in response to the 1993 notice have contacted the division to request that the application be re-noticed so that they have an opportunity to file a protest and participate in the proceedings related to the application.”
The petition notes that in re-noticing the application, the board essentially adopted a policy proposed in a bipartisan bill earlier that same year, Assembly Bill 1631, backed by Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo, D-Chatsworth, and Sen. Scott Wilk, R-Santa Clarita — which circumvents the board’s own legal process for policy adoption.
Their bill would have made it mandatory to re-notice any application more than 20 years old, with the author’s statement alluding to the community changes that have taken place when Cemex predecessor Transit Mix Cement Co. purchased the rights in 1991.
However, Gov. Gavin Newsom ultimately declined to sign the bill into law, stating in a declination letter that the State Water Board had decided to re-notice the only application over 20 years old on the books, Cemex’s, making the bill moot.
Cemex has appealed this move, the appeal was denied by the water board and then taken to the Los Angeles County Superior Court system, which led Judge Stephen Goorvitch to sustain the board’s demurrer, or refusal to reconsider its decision.
That’s the most recent decision the mining company is challenging, whether the State Water Resources Control Board was acting in a prejudicial way against Cemex in its decision not to reconsider the agency’s call to re-notice the permit application for the Santa Clara River.
No court date has been set, but the outcome of that hearing could play a role in the next move for the city, which has been one of the mine’s biggest opponents.
