Granite Construction vs. wildlife corridor

Granite Construction’s proposed Liberty Quarry mine would affect both human health and wildlife. The area has been identified by biologists as one of only 15 such wildland corridors in all of Southern California that “if even one fails, the biological integrity of the entire region would be compromised.” The mining company wants to blast a 1,000-foot-deep, one-mile-long pit mine, dynamiting every day and adding 1,600 diesel truck trips to the Rainbow Valley Road off/on ramps every day for the next 75 years.

Conservation agencies and public land managers are already trying to mitigate the effects of the I-15 freeway on wildlife by adding safer under-crossings for wild animals such as mountain lions, bobcats and foxes. This extremely high-impact, high-polluting and environmentally destructive project would cleave through the heart of this corridor. Polluted runoff from the mine would flow downstream directly into the Santa Margarita River, which is the primary water source for our Marines and their families at Camp Pendleton.

One researcher stated, this mining company would have been hard pressed to find a more sensitive location for their pit mine. The blasting and dynamiting, the concrete and asphalt factories, the high-intensity lighting needed to operate almost 24 hours per day, the silica dust and diesel exhaust and more spell disaster for wild animals trying to rear their young or migrate along this corridor.

Visit http://www.sos-hills.org to help battle this terrible proposal.

Cynthia Myers