CEMEX wants to keep mining San Joaquin River near Fresno. Why wasn’t public informed? | Opinion

A multinational building materials company is trying to pull a fast one on Fresno County residents — and county officials are helping.

Remember CEMEX’s proposal to continue gravel mining along the San Joaquin River north of Fresno for another century? By using even more environmentally damaging methods than those currently employed?

Things have been quiet on that front since 2020 when CEMEX’s impertinent scheme came to light and I expressed my initial outrage.

Sure enough, the gears of destruction are moving once again.

Earlier this month, Fresno County’s department of public works and planning circulated a 57-page conditional use permit application that would extend CEMEX’s aggregate mining operations for an additional four years. (Without an extension, the current permit expires July 28.)

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While this application proposes no changes to the mining methods currently being employed, it’s clear the company hasn’t given up on its horrible idea to blast and drill a 600-foot-deep pit near the San Joaquin.

That much is spelled out in a letter from CEMEX’s legal counsel to Fresno County officials in which the company’s lawyer states the extension is being sought “due to delays in preparing the environmental impact report” for the blast mining proposal.

The county’s CUP application notice is dated Feb. 18 and was circulated to numerous local, county and state agencies, along with several Native American tribes and the nonprofit San Joaquin River Parkway and Conservation Trust.

Guess who has been excluded from the conversation? The public.

Guess who else? Me. Three years ago, I specifically requested to be added to the county’s email list on all developments related to CEMEX’s mining operations — and received a confirmation notice.

But on this latest development, both myself and the public were kept in the dark.

Tuesday morning, I contacted the county’s public information officer, Sonja Dosti, asking what officials were doing to notify the public about the permit extension request.

Dosti told me no public notices were sent out because this application request only seeks to extend CEMEX’s current operations and “is still in the public agency review period” that closes March 1. At some point in the future, a public hearing will be scheduled.

So in other words, the public won’t be informed until the 11th hour about the latest goings on regarding one of Fresno County’s most important natural resources. By then, the extension application will be so far down the road it’ll be that much harder to stop.

CEMEX donates to all five Fresno County supervisors

In what should be a surprise to absolutely no one, CEMEX (including Central Valley operations manager Pete LoCastro and the company’s employee PAC) has made significant campaign contributions to all five members of the Fresno County Board of Supervisors.

Since 2019, the donation amounts range from $3,000 (for Supervisors Nathan Magsig and Sal Quintero) to $7,500 for Supervisor Steve Brandau, whose district includes both CEMEX’s quarry site and processing plant.

But of course, what’s $24,000 in campaign contributions compared to the millions of dollars the Mexico-headquartered company stands to reap from further pillaging California’s second-longest river?

Perhaps that’s why everything about CEMEX’s latest maneuvering has been so hush hush.

I don’t expect our sprawl-addicted county supervisors to do the right thing on this matter — not without a massive public outcry.

Remember, these are the same individuals pushing to construct a town of 9,000 people in nearby Friant, on land owned by the family of former state Assemblyman Frank Bigelow and utilizing water stored in Millerton Lake. Which is already ridiculously overallocated. So much that the nearby Mira Bella development received a $4.2 million taxpayer bailout after its wells began to peter out.

I can hear the supes’ self-serving reasoning already: Fresno County needs sand and gravel from the San Joaquin River for future growth.

No, actually, we don’t. There are other ways to address our region’s housing shortage than building new towns atop grassland-covered hillsides. But of course, those aren’t as profitable for the developers and construction company owners who give local politicians their marching orders.

As I’ve written previously, Fresno County and the river that forms its northern border have been stuck in an abusive relationship for long enough. We take and take and take and leave nothing except irreparable scars.

That cycle must end. Which begins with telling CEMEX to take a hike as soon as its current mining permit expires and the required mitigation measures are completed. Adding those properties to the San Joaquin River Parkway for the public to utilize and enjoy would be the logical next step.

But as long as county officials keep these developments under a cloak of secrecy (and make excuses for doing so), environmental destruction in the name of corporate profiteering and campaign contributions will prevail.

It’s the Fresno County way.