|
News Article
|
Quarry next to state park? No problem!
By Robert Gray
The land carries the city’s tightest zoning restrictions.
It’s even highlighted in the city’s Open Space Master Plan as the “Mountains to River” corridor and the top priority for preservation.
Yet a 480-acre piece of that corridor, located right up against the Franklin Mountains State Park, is now a quarry.
“There was nothing we could do about it,” said city Rep. Susie Byrd.
The parcel, partially visible from Transmountain Road and I-10, was leased to El Paso company Jobe Materials in 2005. This summer, the company began taking rock out of the ground at what it calls the Avispa Quarry.
But because the land is owned by the Texas Permanent School Fund and managed by the General Land Office, or GLO, it doesn’t matter what plans the city has for the land or how it is zoned.
So while the City of El Paso has “this very ambitious open space plan,” says City Rep. Beto O’Rourke, and El Paso County is “trying to market the community as an eco-tourism hub with great natural resources,” says County Commissioner Veronica Escobar, for the GLO, it’s all about the money.
“The whole purpose of this state land is to earn money for the Permanent School Fund,” Jim Suydam, GLO press secretary, said in an e-mail. “This land is not parkland. It is revenue-producing property.”
$23-billion fund
The GLO land is desert and foothills that extend north from Transmountain Road between I-10 and the western slope of the Franklin Mountains.
The rest of the corridor is owned by the El Paso Public Service Board, the state and private property owners.
The GLO’s 480 acres is just a small piece of the 56,000 acres it manages in El Paso County.
The Permanent School Fund dates back to Texas’ earliest days as a state. The Legislature started it with $2 million in 1854, according to the Texas Education Agency, and land was included in 1876.
The fund is now worth $23.1 billion. Last year it contributed $716 million to public education, according to TEA’s annual report.
Jobe’s lease is for 20 years, and the company is required to pay the state 6.25 percent of the market value of rock mined from the quarry.
Owner Stanley Jobe told El Paso Inc., “I am 100 percent for the park, but the park boundary has to end somewhere. How many boundaries do you make? When do you stop?”
He added, “What we produce is a staple product for the construction industry. Nothing can be built without it.”
The limestone-based rock the company is pulling out of the ground at the Avispa Quarry is used to make concrete, pave roads and landscape yards in El Paso.
Having a quarry on the mountain’s west side, Jobe said, reduces the distance the company has to transport the rock. And that, he said, means they burn less fuel, are more competitive and leave a smaller carbon footprint. The company operates two other quarries, in Northeast and East El Paso, as well as two sand pits.
Bulldozers and bikers
According to records kept by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, or TCEQ, Jobe has pulled the required permits, including an air quality permit and stormwater permit.
The company recently cleared rough roads through the property and erected signs to secure it. In the process, the company also bulldozed portions of a trail popular with mountain bikers.
Jobe said he met with members of the Borderland Mountain Bike Association and offered to reroute the trail around the property at his cost.
The bulldozing alerted members of the Franklin Mountains Wilderness Coalition who held an emergency meeting last week to discuss ways to minimize or halt the mining.
Members are concerned that having a quarry so close to the state park – the largest urban wilderness park in the continental United States – will mar its natural beauty.
“The main thing is that it has a visual impact on the environment there that’s going to essentially scar that area forever,” said Scott Cutler, coalition president.
Two arroyos that run through the property were to be the location for a trail that would link the Franklin Mountains and the Rio Grande, according to the city’s Open Space Master Plan.
The quarry, Cutler said, “eliminates the qualities we wanted to preserve for that trail.”
City officials say the quarry highlights the breakdown in communication between the General Land Office and El Paso’s state delegation and city representatives.
“Perhaps we as a city have done a poor job coordinating with our state delegation and the General Land Office,” O’Rourke said.
State Rep. Joe Moody, whose district includes the Avispa Quarry, took office in January 2008, after the deal was made.
“We need to create better synergy between the city and their agenda and what their plans are, and the GLO and any private entities that might be involved,” he said.
He called the GLO recently and said, “Their message to me was ‘let’s work together.’ ”
Staffers for state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, who has announced he would not run for re-election, say they are assembling a team to research the issue.
The area is within city Rep. Ann Morgan Lilly’s district. Her office said she was out of town and not available for comment.
Surprise, surprise
The state park is conducting a survey to ensure that none of the bulldozing encroached on state park land.
“It came as a surprise to us when they brought the bulldozers in,” said John Moses, director of El Paso’s state park complex that includes Franklin Mountains State Park.
A map obtained by El Paso Inc. from the GLO shows that the office manages more land within El Paso city limits. That makes city officials jittery.
Byrd said she is worried that the GLO might sell the Eastside land it manages, and that would grow the city in a different way and at a different pace then the council might like.
What is done with that land could have “a major impact,” she said, “on the growth in the city.”
|
| READER RESPONSE |
|
|
|
| lisa t - posted: 11/1/2009 12:10:22 PM
Fine for Jobe. We know for sure now that he places himself over the City. Now he has this new quarry but there is no requirement that anyone buy his products. | | robnelp - posted: 10/28/2009 3:39:20 PM
It would have been helpful to the readers and interested parties if you had the foresight to publish the map you claimed you obtained so we could all understand better the exact locations of the GAO managed properties. I'm going to be honest and offer you some advice from a 12+ yr web developer. You need to do a better job presenting content on your website, it is woefully behind the times in both form and presentation. As much as you may not like to hear it, the future is the web, If you intend for your publication to survive, additional effort and focus needs to be applied to bring your website up to current standards.
| |
|
|