Is this truly the end?
After eight bitter years of court battles and appeals, the Alaska Supreme Court may have put the final nail in the coffin of a controversial gravel pit in Anchor Point. But property owners who would see and hear the proposed gravel pit just inland from the coast are hesitant to celebrate just yet.
The court issued a decision on Oct. 23 upholding the Kenai Peninsula Borough Planning Commission’s 2022 permit denial for the pit, owned by local realtors Emmitt and Mary Trimble under their limited liability company, Beachcomber LLC.
“It’s been a long haul, and we’re glad to see that part of it over with,” resident Hans Bilben said Tuesday. “We don’t know if that’s the end of it or not.”
Bilben, who lives just one street away from the proposed pit, is one of 42 appellees listed on the Supreme Court opinion. He can see Beachcomber’s property from his backyard.
“I don’t believe it’s off the table…. I don’t believe (the court decision has) disabled this pit from functioning at all. I think (Beachcomber) just has to reapply under the new standards,” neighboring resident Lynn Whitmore said, referring to a 2023 overhaul of borough regulations on gravel pits.
Whitmore’s home shares a border with the Beachcomber site.
The Trimbles first applied in 2018 to operate the 27-acre gravel mine on property they own just south of the Anchor River State Recreation Area, between Danver Street and the Anchor Point beach. The borough planning commission denied their application — a rare occurrence on the Kenai Peninsula due to the demand for gravel — after finding that no berms or buffers would sufficiently mitigate noise and visual effects. Neighboring property owners described the topography of the area as a “natural amphitheater.”
A series of appeals from both Beachcomber and neighboring residents ensued, as the permit application was denied, then approved, then denied again. In appealing the matter to the Supreme Court, Beachcomber argued the planning commission did not follow proper procedure before denying the application in 2022.
The Supreme Court disagreed.
“In its 2018 decision, the Commission interpreted (borough) code as giving it discretion to deny applications that do not adequately minimize noise and visual impacts. That interpretation of the code is reasonable, and it is the same conclusion we reach when we apply our independent judgment,” the Oct. 23 opinion reads.
Partly in response to the Beachcomber conflict, the borough revised gravel pit regulations in 2023 to better balance the interests of both pit operators and residents. The code overhaul created a tiered permitting structure while requiring more notice for certain permit applications and more safeguards for land reclamation after the gravel supply is exhausted.
“Our big fear is that the rewrite of the ordinance has changed the rules, and not in the favor of neighboring property owners,” Bilben said.
The updated borough code calls for street-level visual screening, noise mitigation and lighting restrictions as site-specific conditions the planning department can set. Because of the layout of the land, Bilben said “street-level” isn’t sufficient.
“They were going to put up a 12-foot berm, and several of our houses are 100 feet above the floor of that pit. So the 12-foot berm was meaningless for visual, and also for noise because the noise was going to be rolling uphill,” he said. “The conditions didn’t meet the standards. So what do you do? You change the standards.”
In a phone conversation Tuesday, Mary Trimble pushed back against the amphitheater description and said she wished the planning commissioners had seen the site for themselves in 2018 before denying the permit.
“There’s a bluff line … and yes, some of the properties are a little bit higher, but the reality is there’s just a … small handful of people that actually could maybe see into any development we did,” she said.
Both Bilben and Whitmore said the Danver Street neighborhood isn’t against the gravel industry as a whole; several residents are in the gravel business themselves.
“But when you go to put a gravel pit in the middle of an existing neighborhood, they need to have protections for the neighbors and for the pit operators,” Bilben said.
Trimble said she and her husband don’t intend to sell their Danver Street acreage.
“We said from the beginning, it’s a legacy property. We have five grandkids and two daughters, one that lives adjoining it. Maybe in the future … they will have another opportunity to use the resource as it should be used,” she said.
The Homer Independent Press reached out to the borough planning department to clarify whether the proposed Beachcomber gravel pit has any further recourse under the 2023 revised regulations but did not receive a response before press time.
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