Mike Long makes his living finding flaws in blueprints and measuring the safety of roads and buildings. He applied those skills while looking for a new house in 1991.
Long fixed his civil engineer's eye on land in a rural area in Highland, analyzing the geographic landscape as well as the count of cars and trucks that traveled the corridor in and out of the Provo suburb before purchasing the property. "We moved here for a reason - and it wasn't because we wanted to live near a gravel pit," Long said. "The question here is, why do their rights to build a gravel pit precede ours?"
Stretching from Pleasant View in Weber County to Payson in Utah County, the rising din against Utah's some 50 gravel pits has ranged from protesting the opening of new plants to halting the operation of pits a half century old.
Resident groups are increasing in numbers and strength against such operations, claiming they ruin pristine landscapes permanently, cause noise problems, uincrease air pollution and devalue surrounding land. Several such battles are being waged right now.
"Utah has to grow and develop, but don't do it here, in such a beautiful area, "said Richard James, an opponent of a proposed Geneva Rock operation straddling the Box Elder/Weber county line.
Construction companies are anxious to being digging up the rock, which is desperately needed for I-15 projects and the home-construction crunch. And they have no choice but to locate where the rocks and gravel is found.
The mantra chanted by residents like Long takes on a sing-song rhime reminiscent of a Dr. Suess book: "Not here. Not there. Not anywhere. Keep those hole away from me. And don't you dare change the land I see."
Long is leading a grassroots effort against Granite Construction, which has requested a conditional-use permit from Highland City to mine the remnant sediment of Lake Bonneville on a 50-acre parcel on U-92 at the mount of American Fork canyon.
The company plans to build a gravel pit, asphalt plant and cement batch at a site about a mile from Long's house.
He took 10 days off from his job at Silicon Graphics in Salt Lake City to compile information, pass out flyers door-to-door, circulate a petition that has accumulated 1,000 names, lobby politicians, hire an attorney and whip up a strong corps of some 100 residents who vehemently decry plans for the gravel plant.
"We're going to stop them from building the pit. It's not going to be an easy fight and it might not be this year or in five years. It may take 10 years, but we're going to do it," he said. "If it didn't involve an area with schools, it would be different. It they could beam the stuff up, Scotty, then that would be OK. But there are all those trucks. We just don't want them."
Geneva Rock has asked to have 29 acres in Box Elder County and 19 in Weber County rezoned to allow gravel pit operations. Company officials say a South Weber pit near the junction of U.S. 89 and I-84 at the mouth of Weber Canyon will be unusable in 20 years.
To support his cause against the plan, James has distributed fliers to some 4,000 Pleasant View residents, actively lobbied both county commisions and started a resident group to oppose the pit.
"Gravel pits and residences are not compatible," James said. "Someone has got to stand up and say, `that's enough.'"
An uproar ensued when an old gravel pit and 128 acres were purchased between Spring Lake and Santaquin.
But in Layton, the Craythorne gravel pit continues to operate between two upscale subdivision in the city's east foothills.
Layton residents have not formally organized any opposition ot the pit. An handful, such as Mary Ellen Thompson, contacted the company and complained to the city with little success.
"The desert can't repair itself," Thompson said. "We are creating a dust bowl."
Gravel pits have operated so long in North Salt Lake that it's nearly a tradition. But even these existing pits can raise the public's ire.
Last summer, Concrete Products Company began hauling gravel from a 50-year-old pit around the clock. This move, which the city council approved, angered residents living near the pit on U.S. 89. The extended hours increased noise and stirred up dust so thick "you could taste it," said Lew Jeppson, a North Salt Lake resident.
To try to solve the problems, Jeppson talked to "anyone who would listen," which included neighbors, city leaders, the pit operator and the Utah Department of Air Quality, which keeps full-time tabs on exhaust and dirt sent into the air by the heavy trucks. Companies are fined when found to be out of compliance.
"It's always been a nuisance," Jeppson said. "But last summer, it became a serious problem," which finally got him involved.
Although the uprising didn't halt the pit's 24-hour operation, he received some concessions, such as strobe lights instead of reverse beepers on dump trucks and heavy watering within the pit to decrease the dust. He'll protest again next summer if conditions worsen, he said.
Public opposition isn't new to CPC, said John Burggraf, North Salt Lake project manager. Every year, residents complain. Each time, the company acts to address the complaints.
"Neighborhood issues are always a hot topic. People don't ant gravel pits in their backyards," Burggraf said. "This issue is so emotionally charged, it's hard to keep an even temperament. It's one of the toughest issues to get resolved."
Pits are a necessary evil, especially in Utah's booming construction climate. And rising costs of jauling material sforces companies to access plants near residential areas, he said.
Tom Case believes the Highland gravel pit could be a good neighbor. It has been 10 years since the Utah Supreme court ruled that the land's owners could de-annex from the city to open the plant under the direction of the county's regulations. A paperwork mix-up led to unchanged maps, leaving the acreage on the city's land roster.
Case, a division manager for CPC, which purchased Gibbons and Reed, the company that owned the land in Highland, said some residents near another pit they operate in Utah County don't know they are there. The company also boasts a strong safety record with the third-largest fleet of trucks in the country.
Their trucks logged one million miles without one accident, he said.
"I do feel we can run a safe facility," he said. "We want to minimize the impact. We're concerned about safety and we're concerned about dust. We don't want any by-product of that."
Case said plans for the pit on the north side of U-92 include building 50-foot man-made hills covered by vegetation for a noise and visibility barrier. The company's machinery also operate with nautral guas and have noise- and pollution control devices on site, and will mine so that a residential project can be built on the land in about a decade, he said.
"We don't want to se a Point of the Mountain. We don't want a Beck Street," he said.
That's a nice argument, counters Melisa Bowen, president of a PTA council representint school in Highland, American Fork, Alpine and Cedar Hills, but schoolchildren are not found walking to school or waiting for a bus at Point of the Mountain or Beck Street. In Highland, there are children at risk.
In addition, she said, ther already are trucks roving the roads from Westroc's pit just west of the proposed CPC Plant. The owner of another parcel of land also has expressed interest in mining his land.
At the time of the court ruling allowing the company to mine the land, there was one school in the area. Now, there are 5,000 students attending three elementary school,s two junior highs and one high school.
And they all travel the roads where up to 250 trucks would runto and from the plant daily. Three people in three years have been killed by large trucks on the road Granite trucks would travel.
"We're certainly no questioning the safety record of this company, rather the wise choices of our children," Bowen said. "We feel this will put our children at greater risk."
City leaders are concerned the county's board of adjustments wouldn't crack down on the operating hours, air quality or how many trucks can be used if a conditional-use permit is requested through the county instead of the city council.
Highland's attorney, David Church, said a draft of a permit offered to the company restricts what workers can do so that the impact on the community is minimized.
"We're attempting to go as far as we can," he said. "It if gets to the county, then it gets to be a tougher fight for us to win."
Jerry Larsen, owner of a gravel pit in Lehi, has been through the process of obtaining a permit from the county. He's found they are less than restrictive.
"Utah County doesn't care what you people think," he told some 100 residents at a planning commission meeting last week. "It these people want a permit, they will get it. The company doesn't have to do what you're asking them to do."
Anne Sward-Hansen wants city leaders to just tell the company "no". After making a firm stand, residents can convince the county's adjustment panel that the community would suffer if the gravel pit is allowed to open. Until the proposal is quashed, residents vow to keep fighting.
"They don't need this pit to finish I-15. They can just as easily go somewhere else. We live in Utah; this whole place could be mined. It's like going to Saudi Arabia and saying, `Do you have more sand?'" she said. "If we don't want strip malls and food chains, then why on earth would we want industrial mining in our town?"