posted June 18, 2024 – In 2003, the San Juan County Hearing Examiner (HEX) approved CUP (Conditional Use permit) #03CU004 for the preliminary (BSP) Binding Site Plan for Olerin Business Park. Fast forward 20 years and that original CUP is being used to fast track a proposed Portable Concrete Plant project in the business park on Beaverton Valley Road.
Site of the proposed Concrete Batch Plant at Olerin Business Park on San Juan Island
A complaint was received by Ecology: Ready mix batch plant is setting up operations to do concrete. There are cement mixers on site, a barge of gravel is coming. It looks like they are about to start operating a business, but the project has no permits and they haven’t gone through a SEPA review. They think the contractor is taking advantage of the current situation in San Juan County, there is no person in charge so things have been disorganized lately. “No one has been slapping anyone’s hand around here.”
The HEX wrote in 2003: “This (CUP approval) means, however, that such things as SEPA (State Environmental Policy Act) analysis are far from over for this project. The general uses, which are allowable in the Rural General Use district, may be shown to have significant impacts in the particular case when the site-specific details of the overall project become known.”
Many projects require a SEPA analysis and a Conditional Use Permit. The applicant completes a SEPA checklist. Then a determination is made by DCD (Dept of Community Development) on whether the project receives a Determination of Significance/EIS Scoping Notice (DS), Determination of Nonsignificance (DNS), or Mitigated Determination of Nonsignificance (MDNS).
The cement plant project was issued a MDNS on April 1,2024. Three parties have filed appeals protesting that designation. The three are the Neighborhood Legal Compliance Watch that is very concerned about water pollution, The Friends of the San Juans who question the thoroughness of the SEPA checklist and MEM contracting. The appeals will be heard by the HEX at a hearing still to be scheduled.
Ecology staff wrote in an email to the DCD that “we recently received their application for a Sand & Gravel General Permit, for which they must have completed SEPA. They submitted to us a SEPA checklist and DNS (Determination of Non-Significance) from 2004. The checklist does not specifically mention a concrete batch plant, just general industrial activity.”
She asked Dodd if the county was going to accept the 2004 SEPA. The 20-year old document covered the BSP that included three residences and a commercial parcel. The SEPA checklist did not include questions about a concrete batch plant.
DCD Interim Administrator Kyle Dodd replied in an email: “The portable batch plant will be considered under the existing CUP approved at the time of the BSP which contemplated Industrial uses on that parcel – concrete batch plant is an industrial use. The current proposal will require an updated SEPA review. The environmental checklist was submitted today (February 26, 2024).”
A DCD staff member was concerned for public safety citing documentation on the pollution (mercury, lead, and other heavy metals) associated with concrete batch plants. The site is within 400 ft of County offices, within 600 feet of the Leeward Cove residential cluster development, within one mile of Friday Harbor High school and Middle School, and within two miles of Friday Harbor Airport.
DCD staff noted, “Concrete batch plants require a conditional use permit in the rural general use land use designation. Further, I believe it would be a violation of local regulations to permit a use that requires specific permit requirements (i.e. conditional use permit) without due process under the appropriate permit review procedures, which would necessarily include further SEPA review. In fact, there is specific use regulation for concrete batch plants in our County code that was never evaluated in the business park conditional use permit.”
“Consequently, not requiring application for a conditional use permit for a concrete batch plant could conceivably deprive the public the opportunity to provide public comment on a use that was not specifically approved in any previous documentation, and therefore was never properly mitigated for.”
CUPs include a hearing before the Hearing Examiner.
Another staff member had questions about timing. “It is unclear if the SEPA is being implemented properly and why this project went from submitted to a determination in two weeks, where this applicant is prioritized above over SEPA applicants and the concerns of staff were not considered.”
“There are other projects that management has taken an interest in that are being ‘prioritized’ through questionable determinations and processes that do not appear to be following protocols or in the public interest. Given the pressure this department has been under, I hope we can stop any hint at favoritism or other improper government actions that may be visible to the public here. This is likely to gain some attention from the public, but implications for other larger projects may be even more scrutinized.”
Regarding timing and potential favoritism. The county received an email from Francine Shaw who is working with the owners of Harbor Propane on the permitting of the Bulk Fuel Storage Facility that is on the lot adjacent to the concrete plant. She wrote:
“I recently learned that Mike Carlson is constructing a concrete batch plant on the same property in the Olerin Business Park and he only had to submit a SEPA environmental checklist even though a concrete batch plant was not discussed or evaluated in the 2003 CUP decision nor was it evaluated for compliance with SJCC 18.40.280(C). Furthermore, a concrete batch plant must be approved via a CUP much like Harbor Propane proposed bulk fuel storage facility.”
“Is is possible that we can withdraw the Harbor Propane CUP application and process the facility under SEPA review just like Mike Carlson’s proposed concrete batch plant? It seems that this would even out the paying (sic) field. Harbor Propane is currently being held to a different standard than the Carlson concrete batch plant, and that is not fair or acceptable.”
EDITOR’s NOTE: Efforts to interview Kyle Dodd were unsuccessful. The emails were obtained through a Public Records Request. – Sharon