For nearly four decades, my husband has grown Christmas trees, both in Centralia and outside Toledo. He works hard all year on planting, fertilizing, shearing, trimming tops, controlling weeds and creating handles at the bottom of each tree.
It’s a quiet industry, except in the fall before the holiday season, when larger growers harvest trees to ship throughout the United States and mom-and-pop operations greet customers looking for that perfect tree to grace their home at Christmas.
That’s the peace Scott and Lawna Crossfield sought 14 years ago when they purchased a four-bedroom home on Foster Creek Road with six acres at the end of a dead-end road near Toledo, overlooking a green valley with a large Christmas tree farm on land zoned for agriculture.
Little did they know that Lemmie Rockford of Eagle Cliff Northwest LLC in Cathlamet purchased nearby property that same year where L Rock Industries at 451 Mandy Road resurrected an old state Department of Natural Resources 20-acre pit permit to mine gravel in the peaceful valley. The company, which provides sand and gravel to Lewis County, hauled in large equipment such as rock crushers and beeping trucks, shattering the peace in the rural community.
Scott, who served as a pastor at Toledo First Baptist Church where I attend services, deserves a peaceful retirement after devoting three decades in the U.S. Army as a military police officer, a chaplain, and an emergency medical technician and enduring three tours of duty in the Middle East. He’s a disabled veteran who sustained head injuries and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. Constant rumbling, beeping, and noise from the mine below his home only exacerbates his problems despite his planting trees to muffle the noise.
Five years ago, I wrote about Scott’s battle to find someone to regulate the mine operating below his home, to establish operating hours so neighbors can enjoy quiet hours at times. He testified before Lewis County commissioners, asking them to regulate the mine. He contacted the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, which issued the operating permit, asking them to regulate the mine.
The DNR says it abdicated responsibility for regulating mines to counties and cities. The county says the state has jurisdiction over the mine.
And entwined inside the bureaucratic morass are taxpaying citizens who can find no relief from the constant noise.
“Bottom line is that all other mines in Lewis County are regulated by the county except this one,” Scott said. “The county makes the others shut down on weekends. We suffer.”
We’re in the midst of yet another election season. As citizens, we have no power over city, state, and county bureaucrats who draw government salaries for following rules. Our only recourse is to appeal to those we’ve elected to represent us, those who wield power over bureaucrats if and when they fail to do the job that best serves the taxpayers.
Where are those elected officials now? According to commissioners, they rely on legal advice from the Lewis County Prosecutor’s Office, and those people say the county can’t do anything to help the Crossfields. Of course, I don’t know how much stock to put in that advice given that the same legal department failed to charge a shooter after a man and his dog were killed on a hiking trail near Packwood.
Commissioner Scott Brummer, who may be re-elected on Tuesday, as well as Commissioners Lindsay Pollock and Sean Swope need to stop sitting on their hands, raking in a six-figure salary, and start helping a constituent who has spent the bulk of his life fighting for peace, both overseas and now at home.
Instead, they pass the buck to the state.
So where are Sen. John Braun and Reps. Peter Abbarno and Ed Orcutt? Why can’t they tell the DNR to do its job and regulate the mine? It’s common sense that government should regulate mines, both for environmental reasons and the protection of neighbors. So why isn’t that happening on Mandy Road, where the mine has expanded twice in the past 14 years without any input from neighbors?
As Scott said, RCW 78.44.011 states that “it is the intent of the legislature to clarify that surface mining is an appropriate land use, subject to reclamation authority exercised by the department of natural resources, and land use and operation regulatory authority by counties, cities and towns.”
If the county won’t regulate the mine and the state won’t do its job, perhaps 3rd District Rep. Marie Glusenkamp-Perez can do something to help. She’s also up for re-election, facing state Sen. John Braun on Tuesday. Maybe the federal Environmental Protection Agency can step in where the county and state have failed to help.
I never thought I’d want the feds to intervene in a local issue, but if county and state officials are failing to help, perhaps that’s the next step.
It’s obscene that a mine can operate with impunity, stirring up dust, creating noise and disrupting the lives of neighbors. And why don’t the mine operators set hours that don’t disrupt the daily lives of neighbors? Instead, they decided to operate on weekends during the summer.
“It operates with no set hours or noise control,” Scott said. “This last summer, the mine decided to work almost every weekend, giving us no relief from the constant noise.”
Sure, the Crossfields could sell and move somewhere else, but they’d never recoup their investment with a mine operating next door rather than a quiet Christmas tree farm.
And they wouldn’t need to consider moving if county and state officials would do their jobs.
“Every mine needs to be regulated in Lewis County,” said Scott, who picketed outside the Lewis County Courthouse a week ago after he and his wife testified before commissioners again, as he has done more than a dozen times with the same request.
He said their only recourse may be to file a lawsuit against the county to force regulation of the mine.
Lewis County has already paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent years on lawsuits that could easily have been prevented.
This battle didn’t need to wind up in the courts if those elected to serve actually forced county and state employees to do their jobs and regulate the mine.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
