Granite Construction, a California firm, is eager to strip mine the north slope of Grandeur Peak in lower Parley’s Canyon. The scar would be a mile wide and rise a half mile into the air, changing the character of Parley’s Canyon forever. To make it happen, Granite must first win a court case that seeks to overturn Salt Lake County’s regulation prohibiting new mines in its Parley’s Canyon watershed.
Last week, Representative Corey Snider (R-Paradise) introduced HB355 — a bill that would eliminate the basis of Salt Lake County’s legal defense. Legislation tailored to change the outcome of a private lawsuit is an abuse of the state’s legislative powers. This abuse is compounded because it requires the dismantling of gravel mining regulation statewide.
Last winter, Rep. Snider introduced HB502. Initially, it exempted new gravel mines from local government control. He suggested that this was needed to rescue Utah’s construction industry from a looming gravel shortage. Heated opposition from at-risk communities and their local governments caused Rep. Snider to pare back HB 502 to require only a study of whether Utah’s urban areas face a gravel shortage, how gravel mining should be regulated and by what level of government.
This resulting study was released last week. It debunks Rep. Snider’s and Granite Construction’s shared narrative that Utah faces a critical gravel shortage that drastic deregulation would help solve. The study estimates that Utah has over 1 trillion tons of gravel reserves — enough to last Utah through 2060. The study, however, estimates that Salt Lake County only has enough reserves to last 18 years.
According to the study, gravel mining in Utah is largely conducted in a regulatory vacuum. It notes that the Legislature recently made all gravel mines that were operating before 2019 exempt from local government regulation. Regarding state regulation, the Division of Oil, Gas, and Mining (DOGM) limits itself largely to auditing the reclamation efforts of mines that have closed. Other state agencies, such as Utah’s Division of Air Quality, admit that they lack the resources to effectively control or even monitor emissions by Utah’s several hundred gravel mines. Therefore, the study concludes, no level of government effectively regulates the impacts that ongoing gravel mine operations have on nearby communities.
To remedy this, the study says, DOGM should be made responsible for establishing and enforcing statewide minimum standards that limit gravel mining’s environmental and social impacts. It recommends, further, that local governments be allowed to set more stringent standards where local conditions justify it. This makes sense, the study argues, because those who reside nearest to gravel mines are most affected by their social and environmental costs. If stringent local government regulations make it necessary to import gravel from more distant sources, the constituents of those local governments will most directly bear the additional transportation costs.
Last week, Rep. Snider introduced HB355. Its provisions directly conflict with the findings and the recommendations of the study that his previous legislation commissioned. Recently, as noted, the Utah Legislature defined gravel mines operating under local government permits obtained before 2019 to be “vested” property interests, exempting them from any further local government regulation. Gravel mines opened after 2019, however, are neither “vested” nor exempt. This surviving vestige of local government regulatory authority blocks Granite Construction’s plans to strip mine Grandeur Peak in Parley’s Canyon.
HB355 would abolish local governments’ authority to regulate new gravel mines. It would define an intent to mine gravel, whether past, present or future and whether begun with or without a permit from local government, as a “vested” property interest that is exempt from local government regulation. Rep. Snider’s bill would merely require any would-be gravel miner (e.g., Granite Construction) to serve public notice of its intent to eventually mine gravel on its property and to attend a hearing held by the local government. Once these pointless notice and hearing requirements are met, local government would have no authority to oppose the “vested” property owner’s intention to mine. Salt Lake County would have no legal basis for opposing Granite Construction’s strip mine. Worse yet, all other local governments in our state would be equally helpless to control gravel mining within their jurisdictions.
With HB355, Rep. Snider ignores the findings of the study he commissioned that Utah does not face an imminent gravel shortage, its recommendation that local governments recover their authority to regulate gravel mining within their jurisdictions, and its recommendation that DOGM establish meaningful limits on the impacts on gravel mining at the state level.
HB355 is bad public policy. It would set an ominous precedent for using legislation to dictate the outcome of private litigation. In short, it is special interest legislation as steroids. Urge your representative to oppose it.