Anchorage Daily News

PALMER - After a five-month moratorium on underwater gravel mining, gravel producers have pulled together a plan they hope will allow subsurface mining to start up again.The Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly will consider the measure next month. The body in April prohibited new mining within the seasonal high water table, a tactic gravel producers use to extract as much gravel from a piece of land as possible.

The Assembly decision came after a working group of gravel producers and people opposed to mining had spent months crafting an underwater mining ordinance that satisfied both sides. Gravel producers ultimately said they could not support the measure that was created.

With the prohibition, the Assembly charged the gravel operators to either come up with their own measure addressing water quality and protection by October or learn to live with the working group's measure.

Damage to the water table is the primary issue Assembly members wanted the measure to address.

Assemblywoman Michelle Church, at that April 15 Assembly meeting, said she'd support a proposal from the gravel industry, "if they can bring us information that says they can insure (their operation) properly, that they're going to have the wherewithal to get a picture of what's happening below the ground before they start, and that monitoring is before the fact."

Industry officials took the charge and created Alaska Rock Products Association, a coalition of the large gravel producers, such as Quality Asphalt and Paving and Anchorage Sand and Gravel.

The group hired former Palmer city manager Tom Healy as its executive director. Healy said Thursday that overseeing the subsurface mining proposal is one of several tasks he is working on for the gravel industry group.

Healy said he believes the Alaska Rock measure addressed the concerns Church raised.

"There's a tremendous amount of information that has to be obtained, to be submitted with an application," he said. Monitoring wells must be drilled and information gathered from neighboring property owners' wells, he said.

"There are a lot of requirements that have to be met in this, both in terms of getting the application completed as well as operations," Healy said.

Assemblyman Tom Kluberton on Tuesday told Healy the gravel industry proposal didn't go far enough to protect nearby property owners.

"I brought forward the point about the difficulty on any given landowner to be burdened with having to prove that it was the gravel operator that damaged the water. I'm rather hung up on leaving the burden of proof on the neighboring resident to take on the gravel industry," he said.

Healy said the Alaska Rock proposal includes a requirement that gravel producers seeking to mine in the water table carry $5 million in general liability insurance.

Kluberton said he wanted more than that, like maybe a tax on gravel. The proceeds could go into a fund available for property owners if they need to prove their well was compromised by underwater mining, he said.

"Proving (the producer was responsible) could cost more than $5 million, in my mind," he said.

After hearing Kluberton's concerns, Healy said industry officials are back at the drawing board.

"We're looking at that, and there may be another idea that comes forward. We want to provide assurance that if there was damage, that it would be covered," he said.

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