Santa Clarita Valley Mining Project

Re “City Slams Gravel Company’s Record,” Valley Roundup / Santa Clarita, Dec. 19.

Throughout our region, we see communities working to have influence and a voice in what happens in their own backyard. In the San Fernando Valley, it is the fight for cityhood. In Santa Clarita, it is the fight to protect the environment by preventing a 78-million-ton mega-mining project from being sited within a five-mile radius of nearly 10,000 homes and schools and parks.

Devastating impacts to local air and noise quality, the potential contamination of precious local ground water, the addition of hundreds of six-axle trucks every day on freeways and a questionable environmental record by the project’s promoter, Southdown Inc. have resulted in opposition to this project by more than 70 organizations and elected officials.

On Jan. 23, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will hold a public hearing on this project, which is an appeal of the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission’s denial of the project earlier this year. The Santa Clarita community, including Valencia, Saugus, Newhall, Canyon Country, Agua Dulce and Acton, has continually voiced its opposition to this project to Southdown but the pleas have fallen on deaf ears.

What right does Southdown have to promote its project without first securing the endorsement of the community and the people who will be most affected by it?

Local control and the ability to influence decisions that have direct impacts on the health and quality of life of residents is paramount to good governance.

The Santa Clarita Valley deserves to have a voice.

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LAURENE WEST

Mayor of Santa Clarita