For the second time this year, the city of Spokane Valley has extended a temporary, six-month moratorium on new mining until it completes its comprehensive land-use plan.

Spokane Valley deputy city attorney Erik Lamb says city officials think they’ll finish the comprehensive plan before the end of the next six-month extension, slated to expire in February 2017.

The city’s moratorium doesn’t apply to existing mining or mining-site operations. However, it does prohibit new excavation, mineral product manufacturing, mineral processing, and stockpiling.

Mining in the Spokane Valley is related to aggregate in the form of crushed rock and concrete and is used in the construction of streets, bridges, buildings and residential development. Spokane County altogether has a total of almost 50 mining pits. 

The city imposed a one-year ban in February 2015 to give it time to develop an appropriate regulatory approach to mining. By law, the city is required to designate mineral resource lands for protection, Lamb says.

“We haven’t heard of any operations that have been tangentially affected by this,” Lamb says of the moratorium.

But K.C. Klosterman, spokesman for the Northwest division of Spokane-based Oldcastle Materials, the parent company to Central Pre-Mix Development Corp., says the company still doesn’t agree with the moratorium.

“While we still don’t see the need for the moratorium, we have worked with the city of Spokane Valley during the moratorium to develop appropriate permitting and documentation for both existing operations as well as new sites,” Klosterman says.

As part of the comprehensive-plan process, the city is reviewing existing land inventory and all existing and desired land uses. One of those areas of review involves the industrial zone, which includes gravel mining as an allowed use.

Lamb says it was necessary for the city to extend its six-month moratorium for the first time last February because the comprehensive plan wasn’t finished.

Initial concerns by some mining companies that expressed potential loss of business during the moratorium has subsided a bit, he says.

Still, at least three mining companies, Central Pre-Mix included, expressed their opposition to city officials in January before the initial six-month moratorium extension was approved.

Says Klosterman, “We welcome the opportunity to continue the dialogue with the city to recognize the public’s need for materials close to market coupled with well thought-out, beneficial end-use plans.”

Spokane Valley adopted its comprehensive plan in April 2006. The plan didn’t designate any mineral resource lands within its boundaries, and the city hasn’t designated mineral resource lands since 2006, Lamb says.

Klosterman says only two of six mines in Spokane Valley currently are being used. The remaining mines are no longer in operation and are in the process of being transitioned to residential use.

On average, the cost of aggregate used as road base, or in paving materials, or in concrete for business, can double in cost when it has to be moved more than 15 miles farther from the end use, says Klosterman.

“More than 60 percent of our products are used by government agencies. In the very basic of terms, if we disallow aggregate sites in the city and double the average haul distances, we can only do half as much with our road and some utility budgets,” Klosterman says.