Court provides concrete evidence with ruling on Cemex.

With billions of dollars of infrastructure projects set to get underway in Southern California, fears have been raised that increasingly pricey raw materials could slow or even thwart some construction.

Now, it appears, the region has got at least one break.

After more than a decade of fighting, Cemex SA de CV, the Monterrey, Mexico-based cement giant, won a round in federal court this month in its fight against the city of Santa Clarita to operate a Soledad Canyon quarry.

The Ninth Circuit Supreme Court of Appeals affirmed a U.S. District Court ruling in favor of a consent decree the company reached with L.A. County that would allow Cemex to extract much-needed aggregate--the gravel used in asphalt and concrete.

Estimates are the quarry has the capacity to provide 56 million tons of aggregate gravel over the next 20 years, which would fill a substantial amount of the region's needs.

"You have a lot of construction going on in places like Santa Clarita and we're simply tapping out all of our resources," said Alan Wardin, an executive with Irvine-based construction company Snyder Langston. "Time is money in every industry, but more so in the concrete industry. The stuff dries if it sits around for too long, so the closer the facilities that produce material are to the construction sites, and the more material you have available, the lower the price. It's really not complicated."

The decision comes at a time when the region is about to undergo the kind of construction boom it has not seen since the state freeway system was constructed in the 1950s and 1960s.

Among the major local projects: the Metro Gold Line Eastside Expansion, the Alameda Corridor East rail improvements and car pool lanes on the San Diego (405) Freeway. Moreover, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed issuing $68 billion in state bonds and another $150 billion in other funding to repair the state's battered infrastructure over the next 10 years.

But the fight isn't over yet.

The quarry is just outside Santa Clarita's limits, but the city has complained the project will batter its roads, add dust and diesel soot into the air and otherwise pollute the area. City officials have not thrown in the towel, and any appeal could delay production of the aggregate.

The quarry was first granted a permit by the Bureau of Land Management in 1990, but was opposed by the county until it reached the disputed consent decree in June 2004. The city has claimed environmental review of the project has been insufficient.

Tons of aggregate are needed to produce everything from roads, to bridges to homes. More than 400 tons of the material is needed in the construction of an average home in Southern California and some 1,520 truckloads of it, or 38,000 tons, are needed for one-mile of four-lane highway, according to Construction Materials Association of California.

"Because aggregate is so heavy, it makes more sense to truck it locally so it will help quell the local shortage as soon as production starts," said Cemex spokeswoman Susana Duarte.