CON: SOLEDAD MINE: THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD.

Byline: Jo Anne Darcy

Some neighbors are noisy and polluting, and those who surround them must simply grin and bear it. Other neighbors are outright dangerous. The Santa Clarita Valley is facing the possibility of a project that is all these. The Transit Mixed Concrete proposal by the Southdown Corp. will mine 83 million tons of gravel on a 480-acre site in Soledad Canyon, just east of the city of Santa Clarita's boundaries.

Transit Mixed Concrete representatives say our community misunderstands the environmental impacts. It is very hard to misunderstand when their proposal will:

--Withdraw massive amounts of groundwater (enough for a small community every year) and will jeopardize water availability for current residents.

--Emit huge amounts of dust into the air, damaging our children's health.

--Place one six-axle truck a minute onto our already overcrowded roadways and highways, 24 hours a day.

--As badly as new schools are needed, the Sulphur Springs School District has said it will pull plans for a new elementary school planned near the site if the TMC plan is approved.

Twenty Santa Clarita organizations have joined in opposition to this proposal. Opposition to the project is unanimous among Santa Clarita school districts, water companies, local government and homeowners associations.

It's the real threat to children's health, a predictable decline in area home values and the use of a great deal of precious groundwater that's got residents, schools, businesses, community and government leaders banding together to fight this mega-mining and concrete processing plan.

Southdown Corp., the multinational parent company of TMC, came into town a few months ago claiming a dozen years of preliminary work on the proposal. Yet the company has kept its activity under the radar screen of civic, government and community leaders, many of whom had never heard a word about the project. Most disturbing is the arrogance shown by Southdown when its representatives continually state that no individual, governmental agency or community group can do anything about the proposal.

Southdown has continued to insult our intelligence by using outdated environmental studies, insufficient data and misrepresentations to help make its case that there will be no harmful impact to the environment.

Indeed, the approvals by the federal government already have been provided courtesy of the Bureau of Land Management's Record of Decision, issued in August 2000, which granted Southdown its land use for the property. Ironically, and very irresponsibly, the Record of Decision was granted by the BLM before completion of the environmental impact report for the project.

A few more scary statistics about Transit Mixed Concrete, the proposed mega-mining and concrete process project: 10,000 homes are located within a five-mile radius of the project; mining, blasting and aggregate processing will occur six days a week, 16 hours a day for 20 years; daily winds will blow dust and dirt downward to surrounding homes and schools; excavation will lower the existing ridgeline by 200 feet and the discharge of water from mining operation will pollute the Santa Clara River (the natural river in the region) and surrounding natural habitats.