KHTS Radio Santa Clarita Radio – Santa Clarita News
Cemex is naming the city of Santa Clarita in a lawsuit claiming “numerous and deliberate” contract violations, an issue set to be discussed at a closed session city council meeting next week.
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The Cemex lawsuit, filed on Dec. 22, brings action against the city of Santa Clarita for breach of a 2005 contract challenging the city’s annexation of the Cemex Soledad Canyon mine, according to the lawsuit.
“Prior litigation (was) brought by Cemex several years (ago) challenging the city’s improper efforts in 2005 to annex Cemex’s mining site, in much of the same way as the city seeks now in 2017 to improperly annex the same Cemex site,” reads the court document.
When asked for comment, City Spokesperson Carrie Lujon said the city cannot speak on pending litigation.
The city of Santa Clarita and Cemex previously worked for years to reach a deal that would have compensated the company for the contracts, while avoiding the mine.
The contracts allowed for the mining of up to 56 million tons of sand and gravel from Soledad Canyon that would have added up to an estimated 1,164 truck trips a day to local roads and freeways, as well as causing air quality issues and potential negative impacts to fish, wildlife and plants in the area, said officials in a previous story.
From 1999 to 2006, the two sides engaged in “an aggressive legal and public relations battle,” and Santa Clarita officials spent more than $7 million fighting the mine before a truce was reached in 2008.
That truce appeared to vanish in Feb. 2015, when, after repeated attempts by former Congressman Buck McKeon, R-Santa Clarita, to make a deal with the mine that would have prevented its opening failed, Cemex eventually announced it planned to pursue its mining contracts.
Another truce was called from 2007-15, while a range of solutions from legislation that would have given Cemex land somewhere else to mine in compensation to making the area a landmark so it couldn’t be mined, were discussed.
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The mine is near the railroad tracks so why do we need thousands of trucks to haul the goods?
SCV City Counsel has totally mishandled the Cemex fiasco. $7,000,000 and counting of your tax dollars.
Thank you Buck McKeon, and the rest of the politicians that could use Federal laws to make a permanent stop to these gravel trucks that will litter the highways and create dust and an unhealthy environment, please do the job you were elected to do …
The mine IS NOT the pollution demon that the environmentalists claim. No mining operation is EVER approved by in ANY location by ANY environmental group. The charges of dust and damage to fish, wildlife, etc. ARE NOT proven by empirical research. They were proposed after ESTIMATES based upon ASSUMPTIONS. One should read these reports attesting to the amount of damage this mine. If read, one should ask, “from where is this data obtained”
Just sayin’
Buck McKeon screwed the SCV area. For years he payed lip service to stopping the mine permanently, but never quite got there. Then in his final few months the bill finally clears the House only to be held up by an acquaintance (and previous business partner) of his in the senate.
Buck McKeon rode off to the sunset (as a consultant) and did nothing for the SCV area in regards to Cemex.
The city wants to expand, approving new developments left and right, yet doesn’t want to allow a mine that supplies products necessary for new construction to operate.
So it’s okay if a mine operates in another city’s back yard and not your own? Even it still requires hundreds of trucks driving even farther to deliver the same product?
It’s a gravel mine in the middle of nowhere – Santa Clarita and the people of Santa Clarita need to get over it.