Jefferson County mining expansion OK upheld by appellate court

From the Nov 10th Peninsula Daily News

SHINE -- A Washington State Court of Appeals ruling upholds Fred Hill Materials' right to expand gravel mining at its site south of state Highway 104. The decision released Monday upheld a visiting Kitsap County Superior Court judge's ruling.

Judge Anna Laurie a year ago affirmed a 2004 Western Washington Growth Management Hearings Board finding that a Jefferson County-approved 690-acre mineral resource land overlay for Fred Hill Materials complies with the state Growth Management Act.

The overlay is tangential to Fred Hill's proposed pit-to-pier project -- a controversial plan to build a four-mile-long conveyor belt from the company's Shine gravel pit to a 1,000-foot dock to move gravel to barges in Hood Canal -- which Jefferson County is environmentally assessing separately from the land overlay.