Washougal Pit owner tries again to resume mining

One year after being denied by Clark County, Ridgefield resident Judith Zimmerly is once again attempting to obtain permits to resume mining on her Washougal-area property known as the Washougal Pit.

The Clark County Development Council held a conference, “an opportunity for the applicant to present a development proposal to staff and to become informed about the application review and approval process,” according to the County’s website, to discuss Zimmerly’s pre-application on Sept. 19.

The County requires an applicant to submit a pre-application before submitting a Type II, Type II-A or Type III development application,

“I didn’t see many differences,” Clark County Planner Richard Daviau told Zimmerly attorney Jamie Howsley during the conference. “Of course, we’ll look at it in more detail once you come in for the formal review, but I didn’t see too many differences from the original application.”

Nathan Baker, an attorney for the Friends of the Columbia Gorge, said the pre-application is the first step in “the latest manifestation of Zimmerly’s ongoing attempts to legally resume mining on the property.”

“It’s been at least 20 years since the last valid permit they had for mining expired,” he said. “There was a previous land-use application that was denied by the hearing examiner last year. We haven’t actually seen the pre-application, but from what we understand, it’s exactly the same or nearly the same as what was submitted last time. But again, it is just a pre-application, so that’s kind of to be expected.”

The County was set to issue a post-conference summary report, which could include a list of code requirements, a deadline for application submission, and suggested changes from Zimmerly’s previous land-use application, earlier this week, according to Baker.

“This is going to be a long, slow process. We’re not expecting anything to happen quickly,” Baker said. “But eventually this will go out to the public for comments. If anybody’s interested in staying apprised of what’s happening with this project, they can sign up to the Friends’ email list by going to our website. We will make sure to keep the public apprised of what’s happening with this project.”

Daviau said during the conference that the pre-application is the first step in a “three-step process.”

“The first step, of course, being this pre-application conference. That’s the first step to reviewing the required application processes,” he said. “The second step is the conditional use permit, preliminary site plan, and Gorge review. And that final review process is the final site plan and final engineering review. All three of these processes, all three of these steps, have different submittal requirements and application fee requirements.”

The completion of an environmental impact statement (EIS) is one of the main factors that will slow down the process, according to Baker.

“(At the conference), Clark County staff strongly implied that it will be requiring the preparation of an EIS for this project, and that’s no surprise because that was one of the reasons why the hearing examiner denied the last application — he found an EIS was required,” he said. “We fully expect that there would need to be an EIS done for this new (application). The preparation of an EIS typically takes quite a while.”

The project is “kind of a microcosm of so many different types of resource impacts and conflicts between competing interests that are found in the Pacific Northwest, all found in one in one project at one site,” Baker said.

“With all the impacts to water resources, noise impacts, dust impacts, traffic impacts, scenic resource impacts, (plus the fact that) it’s adjacent to a national wildlife refuge and located inside of a National Scenic Area, there are just so many potential impacts to protected resources and sensitive resources that there’s no question that there needs to be an EIS fully examining all the potential impacts,” he added.

Baker said that Zimmerly will also have to include a reclamation plan for restoring the site once the mining is completed.

“That’s required under the National Scenic Area rules,” Baker said. “It would not be required anywhere else in Clark County, but because this site is inside of the National Scenic Area, there are unique rules for reclamation and reclamation plans that were violated here, and the application was incomplete in that respect. So that’s one thing that they’re definitely going to have to do differently this time — submit a reclamation plan.”

Zimmerly acquired a land-use permit from the Gorge Commission in 1993 and mined the site for four years before stopping in the winter of 1996-97, when severe winter storms in Clark County caused landslides and other damage, including “catastrophic” offsite discharge of sediment-laden mining runoff from the Zimmerly property onto adjacent properties and into the environmentally sensitive Steigerwald Lake National Wildlife Refuge and Gibbons Creek, destroying nearly one mile of river salmon habitat, Baker said. As a result, the Washington State Department of Ecology fined Zimmerly and Nutter almost $200,000.

“And that’s essentially when mining stopped,” Baker told The Post-Record in August. “There was essentially no mining for 20 years, and because they stopped for more than one year, they lost their permit.”