Duarte Vulcan Lawsuit Denied
DUARTE, CA, May 10, 2011 - The City of Duarte’s lawsuit originally filed in August 2010 challenging the City of Azusa’s approval of the Vulcan Materials mining expansion project has been denied.
The hearing on the matter originally occurred in late March.
“The City is extremely disappointed that the numerous valid points raised in our lawsuit were ultimately rejected at the lower court level, commented Darrell George, City Manager. George added, “Duarte continues to have serious concerns over substantial health and environmental impacts this project will have on both our residents as well as those of the entire San Gabriel Valley.”
The City has at least 60 days to determine if it will file an appeal with the State Appeals Court.
Duarte’s lawsuit detailed the Azusa City Council’s violations of the California Environmental Quality Act and sought to overturn its certification of the Final Environment Impact Report (FEIR) and related entitlements for the mine expansion project. The lawsuit raised numerous points including insufficient analysis of air quality impacts from blasting and trucking activities; ignoring South Coast Air Quality recommendations on the location and number of air monitoring stations; and Azusa’s failure to impose any mitigation measures for potential liquefaction impacts.
Additionally, the lawsuit targeted the Azusa City Council’s violations of the Brown Act, California’s “open meeting” law. Specifically, the Council’s “motion to table the rules of parliamentary procedure” and as well as its subsequent approval of the CUP and the Development Agreement. Duarte’s suit contended that Azusa violated its own Municipal Code and Development Agreement law when it approved the CUP and the Development Agreement without either adopting a motion for reconsideration or following the necessary procedural steps.
As approved by the Azusa City Council, the Vulcan mining expansion project is poised to destroy Van Tassel Ridge as Vulcan plans to extract 105.6 million tons of aggregate from the mountain between now and 2038. Over that same period, the City of Azusa stands to make more than $65 million in mining fees and incentives from Vulcan at the expense of its neighbors in Duarte.
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