The headline sums it up. The Seven Sands mine applications were denied last night. Not once, but six times due to the way that the applications were filed. On prompting from the County Attorney, the Board came up with a slightly different series of reasons to justify their decision with each successive motion to deny.
My memory is a little fuzzy but here are some of the reasons they listed for rejecting the applications (I’ll update this when I get a copy of the recording of the meeting):
- The size of the project (the largest yet proposed in the County)
- The impact on neighboring land owners
- Unresolved traffic safety issues
- Economic and health impact of traffic through the center of small river towns
- Impact of traffic on CFC school children and buses
- Impact of traffic on County and State highways
- Unresolved haul route issues
- Inconsistent with the Montana Township land-use plan an an apparent conflict with the wishes of something over 75% of the township residents to exclude industrial development from the township
- Incomplete applications and insufficient information to evaluate
- Health impacts
- Water table and water quality impacts
- Air quality impacts
- Opposition by the CFC School District after they were unable to reach agreement with Glacier Sands over traffic safety issues