April 19, 2003

County Department Retracts
Go–Ahead Document for
Maury Island Mining

Under fire from opponents of Maury Island gravel mining, the King County Department of Development and Environmental Services has withdrawn its determination that a supplemental environmental impact statement was not needed for the radically redesigned loading dock required by the mining project.

The islanders’ action group “Preserve Our Islands” was shocked to find that the County’s analysis, published on 28 March, completely ignored voluminous expert comments submitted by POI. After vigorous protests, the Department pulled the offending document, claiming that the expert comments had been mislaid.The Department did not explain why its report simply copied large parts of the analysis submitted by the project proponent. But the Department did undertake to submit the issue of the revised dock plans to an outside analysis. 

Once that review is complete, the Department may decide to issue a supplemental EIS, with a new public-comment period.  POI (& RCAA) urge that a new public hearing is also required.  After the close of that new comment period, the matter can be appealed to the Shoreline Hearings Board. Many other permits remain unresolved.

 


©RCAA 2002
Regional Commission on Airport Affairs
is a nonprofit citizens' organization
19900 4th Ave S.
Normandy Park, WA 98166
(206)824-3120
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The red lines mark the boundaries of the areas where Glacier has plans to mine sand and gravel. As much as 10% of Maury Island's land mass may be removed, from over 235 acres, to a depth within 15 feet of the island's sole fresh water aquifer, just above sea level.

Why this matters to
3rd runway opponents—
and to residents of Des Moines

Expansion projects at Sea-Tac Airport will require more than 25 million cubic yards of fill.(That’s more than twice the volume of the Grand Coulee Dam!) The third-runway embankment alone requires 19.84 million cubic yards. Finding such huge quantities of fill is a real challenge.  Aside from fill “borrowed” from other parts of the Airport, the closest big source of fill is Maury Island.  The top few inches of the gravel there is contaminated with arsenic & other toxic fall-out from the old Asarco smelter at Ruston.  Ambitious folk would like to remove millions of tons of the gravel from Maury Island, barge it to Des Moines, off-load it on a new pier, & then move this material via conveyor belt through Des Moines & up to the Airport.  People in Des Moines do not want this conveyor operation on their beach, in their park, next to their senior center.