How Large-Scale Gravel Mining Affects You

Very Serious Consequences

Open Pit Gravel Mines Depress Property Values FOR MILES – Numerous studies show that this type of mining dramatically depresses property values for miles around. Values drop from 5% as far away as 3-miles and as much as 35% within 1/2–mile! Read the Study.

Damaged Property Values Severely Affect Tax Revenues – It only follows that decreased property values lead to a decrease in tax revenues for the township and Jackson County. To address these shortfalls, governments either need to cut back — or increase everyone’s tax rates. So even if your property value doesn’t fall, you are still negatively affected by the overall value damage!

Gravel Mine Would Create Widely Known Deadly Health Issues – that Would Harm Hundreds of Jackson County Residents. Until recently, few understood the dangers created by crystalline silica dust. It has proven links to diseases that lead to death including silicosis, lung cancer, COPD, renal failure, and kidney disease as well as causing auto-immune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis.

Ground Water Disturbance – What’s in the ground? Hundreds, if not thousands, of residents rely on groundwater drawn near the proposed mining site. Mining operations, washing, dust control and digging has the high probability of disturbing an already fragile groundwater source.

Traffic Safety – the danger gravel truck traffic would most certainly create is perhaps the most frightening, as it is also the most deadly. The danger is created by 82 ton gravel trucks slowly pulling out onto North Parma Road. What is the actual stopping distance of an 82 ton gravel train with brakes in less than peak condition that is speeding at 55 mph on wet roads?

Noise – The clamor of a gravel mine includes the revving of diesel engines from gravel trucks, bull dozers, crushers, sorters, and other equipment, the clanging racket of machines at work, and the daylong annoyance of OSHA required backup beeping – BEEP BEEP BEEP! This combined with the creation of noxious smells will lead to the loss of property enjoyment.

Michigan’s gravel statue provides categories of ‘very serious consequences’ (VSQ) into which all of these concerns can be grouped [MCL § 125.3205 (5) (a) through (f)]. Using broad labels, these include Existing Land Uses, Environmental Issues, Protection of Property Values, Traffic Safety, and Local Health, Safety, & Welfare.

This project will affect Parma Township, Sandstone Township, and surrounding areas.

IMPACT ON GROUNDWATER

Gravel mining can open pathways of exposure for groundwater contamination and interrupt ground and surface water flow.

IMPACT ON AIR QUALITY

Poorly regulated gravel extraction can release polluting particulates such as crystalline silica dust (a health hazard which, when fine enough, can travel a mile or more when airborne) and diesel exhaust. Learn more here.

IMPACT ON TRAFFIC SAFETY

The proposed North Parma Road mining operation will add ~150 round trips per day to the North Parma Road corridor in the Parma & Sandstone townships. Traffic for the proposed mine on North Parma Road would create more than 150 gravel trucks traveling through each day.

IMPACT ON PROPERTY VALUES

A 2006 study of residential property values in Richland Township (near Kalamazoo), conducted by the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, showed a decline in property values based on proximity to a gravel mine there. Residences within 0.5 miles of that mine were expected to realize a 30% reduction in property value, while residences 3 miles away would realize a 5% reduction. The study authors believed these were conservative estimates. A 2019 study performed by Friends of the Platte River Watershed in Homestead and Inland Townships in Michigan, using similar methods, found property values near a proposed 150-acre mine would be depressed by nearly $14 million.

*If the same methodology was applied to Parma Township, the areas surrounding the gravel site would show the decline in property values shown here.

Original The Upjohn Study on property loss in proximity to aggregate mining considered its loss estimates to be “conservative”.

IMPACT ON OUR ENVIRONMENT

Aggregate mining damages soil and a poorly-reclaimed operation leaves a blight on the landscape.

IMPACT FROM NOISE

Rock crushers, truck loading and truck traffic can create noise, both intermittent and continuous, over periods of time.