The owner of a gravel pit in Fairplay has pulled his application to add an asphalt plant to the aggregate mine, citing “threats and harassment” to his workers. Park County planners, in a now-deleted online announcement of the withdrawn application, also said they were being “harassed and threatened” over the proposal.
“This issue created a lot of misinformation and concerns,” Park County spokesperson Emmy Glancy West said, adding that the county’s director of operations and his staff were dealing with confrontations from angry residents “at the grocery store, the gas station, all over. So we are really pleased that the applicant decided to no longer pursue this project.”
As Colorado collects more than $4 billion in federal dollars to improve roads and calls for new housing reach a crescendo, the gravel miners and contractors in charge of providing concrete and asphalt are facing stiff opposition. Across the state — in Colorado Springs, Delta, Dotsero, Fairplay, Glenwood Springs, Lyons, Pagosa Springs, Salida and Silverthorne — residents are sounding alarms over aggregate mining expansions and asphalt and concrete plants, citing impacts to air, water and the riparian corridors where gravel accumulates.
“There are better places for those kinds of things to go, not 200 feet from the river and less than that from peoples’ homes,” said Paul LeMaster, whose home abuts the Ellie Belle Mine outside Fairplay where the aggregate miner hoped to build a temporary asphalt plant. “A lot of people are worried about toxic air pollution and our drinking water being contaminated from the plant’s holding ponds.”
LeMaster and his wife, Tabby, launched a petition — both online and collecting hundreds of signatures door-to-door — to block the asphalt plan.
“I’m a little wary that they are trying to use the fact that the people in the community were largely against it and they are going to try to make us seem like an angry mob,” LeMaster said. “We are not done. We are concerned they will try to regroup and try again in the future.”
Scott Downen bought the dormant Ellie Belle Mine in 2021 and his South Park Aggregates began mining sand and gravel as allowed in the county’s mining zone. The gravel pit riled neighbors in 2017 when the Discovery Channel revived long-dormant gold mining at Ellie Belle for its “Gold Rush” show.
Last year Downen asked the county for a 20-year temporary use permit to produce asphalt and concrete in portable hot-batch plants at the Ellie Belle along the Middle Fork of the South Platte River. The plan for 12-hour weekday operations and limiting work on Saturdays called for producing 20,000 to 40,000 tons of asphalt and the same amount of concrete a year in addition to as much as 260,000 tons of aggregate and sand. The proposal included work to mitigate impacts to air and water and county staff recommended that Downen’s permit request be approved with several stipulations, including that Downen monitor air pollutants to make sure toxic compounds did not exceed state-allowed levels.
Mike Smith, the director of Park County operations and planning, recommended that final approval for the plan be handled by the board of commissioners, noting that the project was larger in scope than most temporary use permit applications and the commissioners could better weigh public input from nearby residents.
The Park County Planning Commission review of the plan scheduled for Feb. 14 was postponed when residents overfilled the commission meeting room.
Denial in Delta County
Delta County Commissioner Don Suppes knows what that looks like. In October 2022 he reluctantly voted to deny an asphalt plant proposal facing fierce opposition from nearby residents. The denial was based on a rule from previous commissioners that specifically prohibited asphalt plants at the site along the Gunnison River.
In the spring of 2022, Elam Construction asked Delta County planners for a permit to expand its newly acquired Delta Paving Gravel Pit on the Gunnison River off Colorado 65 east of Delta. Elam also wanted to add a portable hot-mix asphalt plant to the 20-year-old gravel pit, which required removal of a previous county restriction that prohibited asphalt production. The proposal to operate the asphalt plant temporarily while the company did roadwork for the state transportation department included promises to mitigate air, noise and sound impacts.
The gravel pit expansion and asphalt plant plan stirred opposition from neighbors who largely opposed the asphalt plant, citing the county’s 1999 restriction of asphalt production at the gravel pit. Delta County commissioners in October 2022 denied the asphalt plant but allowed Elam Construction to expand its gravel operation on the river.
Opposition nixes gravel mining in Archuleta County, Lyons, Silverthorne
The Colorado Mined Land Reclamation Board in 2021 rejected a vehemently opposed proposal for a new 54-acre gravel mine near the Blue River north of Silverthorne. In 2018, the board rejected a plan to build a quarry south of Colorado Springs.
In Salida, the BLM is more than three years into an environmental review for a gravel pit expansion on Methodist Mountain that has raised concerns among neighbors and cyclists who built trails adjacent to the Hard Rock Paving gravel operation. A Glenwood Springs quarry owner has spent years battling for a controversial and troubled expansion of a limestone quarry above town, where the operator hopes to mine aggregate and ship it on rail cars to the Front Range.
Archuleta County in 2022 proposed a gravel pit on Forest Service land northeast of Pagosa Springs near Jackson Mountain. The county said the gravel was needed for 300 miles of county-maintained dirt roads and 400 miles of Forest Service roads in the Pagosa Ranger District. There are two other pits in the county and they are running low on gravel, the county said in its planning documents submitted to the Forest Service, and it costs $150 an hour to haul gravel.
The county and San Juan National Forest have spent several million dollars since 2020 to source and truck gravel across the county and those costs “could be drastically reduced” with a new pit at Jackson Mountain, the county argued. The pit was planned inside a proposed 40 miles of mountain bike trails around Jackson Mountain and a larger wildfire mitigation and tree removal project.
Residents near the proposed pit organized in opposition, creating a website and attending meetings, arguing the project would impact the local community with truck traffic and dust.
In April 2023, following a public comment period, the Pagosa Ranger District removed the trails and the gravel pit plan from its analysis of the wildfire mitigation project around Jackson Mountain. District Ranger Josh Peck said in a statement that the Forest Service and county needed to take “a more thorough and holistic look” at gravel pit opportunities around the county before considering Jackson Mountain “to ensure that this site meets the best needs of the county.”
In Lyons, neighbors are battling a permit renewal for the Cemex plant, one of three cement manufacturing operations in the state. The same Boulder County opposition group successfully fought a proposal to extend mining operations at a Cemex-owned quarry adjacent to the cement factory.
A third attempt at a gravel mine above the Colorado River
Mike Young built a water ski lake on an old 40-acre gravel pit outside Dotsero in 2000. He and three other partners have about 220 acres of land along two miles of the Colorado River at Dotsero. His Rincon Materials investment group is proposing a 10-year plan to mine gravel for about nine months a year on 70 acres of the 107-acre mining property, disturbing 5 to 10 acres at a time. The plan calls for electric conveyor belts to reduce truck traffic at two gravel pits located on a mesa 110 feet above the river.
It’s not the first time a gravel pit has been proposed at the riverside parcel.
Elam Construction, a Grand Junction paving contractor that has been working on Western Slope roads for more than 50 years, in 2016 partnered with the previous landowner of the parcel along the Colorado River to develop a gravel operation. The plan asked the town of Gypsum to annex about 150 acres and issue a 10-year permit to develop three gravel pits that would produce and process about 230,000 tons of aggregate a year to support construction in the valley. The owner of the land back then, Karl Berger, also inked a conservation deal with Eagle County Open Space and the Eagle Valley Land Trust to prevent development of a 38-acre pasture stretching 6,000 feet along the Colorado River.
After heated opposition from residents, the Gypsum Town Council rejected the plan. Berger sold the land to Young and his partners and in 2019, Rincon Materials proposed a smaller gravel pit. The Eagle County Planning Commission in 2021 recommended denial of the Rincon permit, agreeing with county staff that the plan did not jibe with the 2012 community plan for the Dotsero area, which designated the property as “rural agricultural.”
Young and his partners pulled their 2019 application before the proposal went to the county commissioners and revised their plan with only two gravel pits, not three, and improved mitigation to hide the mining operation so it would not be visible from the river.
Still, the Eagle County Planning Commission in October 2023 recommended that county commissioners deny the application, citing potential impacts to wildlife, the environment and “general inconsistency with the Dotsero Area Community Plan.”
Eagle County planning staff, however, recommended that county commissioners approve the plan with several conditions, including the removal of the conveyor belt system every year when mining is idle, compliance with state regulations and paying the county a $157,000 road impact fee.
The commissioners in early February delayed a hearing on the Rincon Materials plan, citing a need for more detailed analysis of a review by Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
Young said there are thousands of gravel trucks that drive through Glenwood Canyon every year to deliver aggregate to the Casey Concrete plant in Dotsero. His plan could limit that truck traffic and offer builders in Eagle County a competitor to existing gravel providers.
“It’s good to have accessible gravel pits and we can’t shut the door on gravel,” said Young, who secured a permit from the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety in 2020 with a bond of $163,973 to ensure reclamation work is completed. “We have changed this plan to address the concerns and Eagle County needs this. The housing issue is a really big problem and the county has kicked the can down the road on housing for years. They are going to do the same thing for gravel and we will end up in the same type of crisis.”
Just as it did in 2016, the gravel plan along the Colorado River has galvanized diverse recreational and environmental groups in opposition. Eagle County has spent more than $15 million in the past decade to improve and protect river access along the Colorado River. Anglers, boaters and wildlife advocates sent hundreds of comments to county planners, urging rejection of the proposal they called “the gravel plan that refused to die.”
Susie Kincaid, who has led opposition to the gravel mine proposals for almost a decade, pointed to nearby gravel mines that have reserves that will provide construction materials for decades.
“All the bells and whistles they have tried to put on the Rincon project to make a round peg fit a square hole are not necessary. We have enough gravel for the foreseeable future in Eagle County. This is a contrived need,” said Kincaid, who lives in Eagle. “The Colorado River is among the most endangered rivers in our country. And as an Eagle County resident I trust that our commissioners take the duty to protect the headwaters of the Colorado very solemnly.”
The Hidden Valley gravel mine on the Colorado River, which is owned by Utah-based construction and aggregate, asphalt and concrete conglomerate United Companies, is less than 2 miles north of Dotsero, near Coffee Pot Road. The mine was approved for expansion by county commissioners in 2008 with a maximum allowed production of 350,000 tons a year through 2043, with an estimated 13 million ton lifespan. The commissioners in 2008 said the approval was based on the mine owner’s winning bid to extend the runway at the Eagle County airport.
There are two other gravel operations in Gypsum — the Tower Pit and the Gypsum Ranch Pit, which is also owned by United Companies — that have 1.45 million tons of gravel available under the county’s existing permits.
Colorado is the sixth-largest producer of sand and gravel in the U.S.
Delta County Commissioner Suppes told The Sun he talks with commissioners across Colorado “and they all have the same problem.”
“People are always anxious to complain about the quality of roads and … the cost of materials is directly related to how many miles of roads get fixed,” Suppes said. “Everyone thinks gravel and asphalt should be done in someone else’s neighborhood though. The NIMBYs are a very loud group when something is affecting them directly.”
Colorado quarry and gravel pit operators produced 58.64 million tons of aggregate — 39.8 million tons of sand and gravel and 18.8 million tons of crushed stone — in 2021, making the state the sixth-largest producer of construction sand and gravel in the country. Those producers generated $346 million for sand and gravel and $184 million for crushed stone. The average price for sand and gravel — $8.69 a ton— and crushed stone — $9.76 a ton — were record highs in 2021.
The price for aggregate is highly dependent on transportation costs.
“Locating quarries close to population centers helps lower overall costs,” reads the Colorado Geological Survey’s annual Mineral and Energy Industry Activities report for 2021-22. “However, residential and commercial development near an aggregate source can make permitting a new or expanding quarry a challenge.”
The report noted that $3 billion in federal funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will likely spike demand for aggregates.
“There is not a structure I can think of that cannot be built without construction aggregates,” said Todd Ohleiser, executive director of the Colorado Stone, Sand and Gravel Association, which includes 25 aggregate mining companies and 125 companies that support the industry. “All the opposition we are seeing is adding up. We talk about affordable housing and we talk about improving our roads. That requires mined materials which are vital parts of a thriving economy.
“If we stop construction it would be a death wish for Colorado, a state that thrives on tourism and travel. We need to replenish and have quality construction materials. You can’t have an economy without them. There has to be a better balance.”