The Fenton Sand Mine at Pala

The Fenton Sand Mine on the San Luis Rey River at Pala, located four miles east of I-15 along SR76, has a Major Use Permit from San Diego County for 225 acres of the river bed. They mine 600,000 tons of sand per year that is used for about 20% of all the concrete used in San Diego County. Most of the double trailers seen along SR76 and I-15 in North County originate from this mine, operated by Hanson Aggregates Pacific Southwest. The facility is also called North County Redi Mix.

There are two other nearby mines, both in the Pala Indian Reservation a few miles upstream:

• The Pala Indians in 1999 are building a lake in Acorn Park, the Pala Indian campground in the floodplain of the San Luis Rey River on the western edge of the reservation. Acorn Park is immediately south of SR76 on the north side of the river. They are temporarily selling the sand as a byproduct of the lake building.

• The Calmat Pala Aggregate Mine is a rock/sand/gravel quarry on the alluvial slope of Magee Creek, with a concrete batching plant and asphalt mixing plant.

History:

• 1969: A Special Use Permit was granted for five years to mine sand from 27 acres and authorize facilities for processing, washing, screening, grading and storage of sand.

• 1975: A Major Use Permit (74-088) granted for 30 years to increase the mining area to 211 acres, including a "borrow pit" (i.e., a quarry, as compared to surface operations) and authorize the sand processing plant.

• 1981: Modification to the Permit to allow a cement batching plant on site.

• 1982: Board of Supervisors approves a Reclamation Plan which features a future 94 acre lake.

• 1992: The U.S. EPA issued a Compliance Order requiring the construction of a 4,900' long, 80' wide, 30' high dike to remedy physical and biological impacts to the River by keeping the River away from the mining operations and thereby confine the River to the eastern portion of the property. By constricting the river, the dike causes sediment deposition both upstream and downstream of the Mine.

• 1994: Minor modification to the Permit to satisfy the Compliance Order. Construction of a riprap earthen dike begins.

• 1995: The construction of the dike was halted at 2,400' long and 5' high, not protected by riprap, due to the discovery of two Arroyo Toads.

• 2000: On January 21, the Planning commission approved an addition of 11.8 acres to the Permit, transferring the authorized mining areas from the southern part to the northern part, closer to SR76. This action becomes final if no appeal to the Board of Supervisors occurs.

  Mining of 31 acres in the southern portion was forbidden after the determination that it contained habitat for three endangered species: the Arroyo toad, the least Bell's vireo, and the Southwestern willow flycatcher. Therefore that mining area will be replaced by 26 acres on the northern portion, including the new 11.8 acres.

  A 100' wide buffer area that includes a 4' high landscaped berm is required to screen the operations from SR76 motorists.

  A 207 acre conservation easement was also established, as required by the Clean Water Act Section 404 Permit for the site. This easement may preclude any recreational use of the future lake. (Although Marvin Howell, project spokesman for Hanson Aggregates, stated on 3/17/00 that "~120 acres will be dedicated as a conservation easement where there could be no development and the land would be preserved in its natural state forever" - VN 3/23/00, B1. I don't know the relationship of these 120 acres to the 207 acres.)

Future:

The Mine is supposed to end operations in 2005, assuming that there have not been any other extensions to the original 1975 30-year Use Permit. The dikes on the River are supposed to gradually erode over several decades thereafter, being overtopped by a 10 year storm event and especially eroded from a 100 year storm event, filling the borrow pit with river sediments again.

Once the pit is filled, the dikes will be removed.

However, debate is ongoing about the future of the Mine. The Pala-Pauma Sponsor Group want the rock dike to remain to retain the existing pond, and also want the site to be a public park as partial compensation to the community for putting up with the mining operation for 36 years. The County Department of Planning and Land Use is considering 18 acres outside the conservation easement for the desired lake. However, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the California Department of Fish and Game are all strongly against fishing and boating adjacent to a conservation area.

Sources: Gregory Canyon Draft EIR, 4.4-4,5, 5-8; VN 2/3/00, 3, 34; Carol Whitmore emails of 2/7/00, 2/9/00.

Sand Mining and the Sand-Starved Beaches of North County:

Sand mining of the San Luis Rey River is the major reason that North County beaches from Oceanside south are losing their sand, resulting in expensive measures to put sand from other sources onto the beaches.

Sand on beaches moves in a continuous cycle. It is transported by rivers to the ocean, and then follows the ocean currents along the beach until the sand is lost to the beach, either through transport offshore or capture by a deep canyon near shore. The transport along the beach is called a littoral cell.

In North County, the Oceanside littoral cell begins in Oceanside and ends in La Jolla. This cell loses between 90,000 and 790,000 cubic yards of sand annually, depending on the severity of the storm season (SDUT 1/3/95, B1). Since a cubic yard of sand weights 1.35 tons, it doesn't take a genius to see that the 450,000 cubic yards of sand that the Fenton Sand Mine is removing each year is almost exactly the amount of sand needed by the North County beaches each year.

Reinhard Flick, an oceanographer with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, has documented 20 years of slowly decreasing maximum beach widths from ~1978 to 1998, beginning roughly 10 years after the commencement of the Fenton Sand Mine. Douglas Inman, director of Coastal Studies at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, predicted in the early 1980s that North County's beaches would "be like they are now, a patchwork of sandy beaches sprinkled between cobble-covered beaches". (Source: SDUT 3/23/98, A1)

North County is unusual in that there is only one dam on the rivers north of the San Dieguito River holding back any sand that ordinarily goes to the beaches, which is the major cause of denuded beaches elsewhere. Therefore, pointing the finger to the Fenton Sand Mine is much more easily justified here than for similar situations elsewhere. The only additional restriction on sand flow to the beaches may result from the Lake Henshaw dam at the headwaters of the San Luis Rey, which may also cut peak flood flow enough to inhibit sand transport downstream.

The cost of putting sand on the beach artificially is at least $5 - 10 per cubic yard (SDUT 4/14/93, A1). Thus the cost to the beaches of North County is about $3 - 6 million per year for the sand mined by the Fenton Mine.

Therefore the true cost of the sand taken from the Sand Mine include the following:

• the dollar costs to replace the sand on the beaches of North County;
• the degraded beaches of North County even after the minimal sand replacement that they receive;
• the visual degradation caused by the quarry;
• the aggravation and traffic delays caused by the Mine traffic; and
• the cost to the habitat of the San Luis Rey River.

I thank Reinhard Flick for pointing out the possible reduction in peak flow caused by the Lake Henshaw dam.

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Copyright © 1997-2000 by Tom Chester.
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Last update: 24 March 2000.