Technical experts employed by the city of Temecula, scientists with San Diego State University and Pechanga tribal officials criticized Riverside County's environmental review of Granite Construction's Liberty Quarry project during a hearing conducted Wednesday by the county Planning Commission.
San Diego State University runs a research field station west of the quarry site in the Santa Margarita Ecological Reserve; the city borders the quarry site to the north and the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians reservation sits to the east.
The hearing, held at Rancho Community Church in Temecula, was the third in a series of hearings being conducted on the project. If needed, a fourth meeting, which will allow Granite to provide a rebuttal and its own expert testimony, will be held June 29.

The audience for Wednesday's hearing appeared to number 500 to 600 people, many of whom were wearing orange T-shirts or hats denoting opposition to the quarry. After a dinner break, the commission took more comments from Pechanga representatives and members of the public who had signed up to speak.
As of 10:30 p.m., the commission still had about 30 requests to speak remaining.
According to the representatives of the three potential neighbors of the proposed project, the county did not meet the state's legal requirements for review of the quarry. In some cases, the speakers said, the engineers who put together the studies that were used in the review omitted information about Pechanga sacred sites and the migratory paths of animals, manipulated air quality data to help meet state and federal standards, and failed to use industry standards during the assembly of other types of data.

"A textbook case for how not to do an EIR (environmental impact report)," said Courtney Coyle, an attorney representing the Pechanga tribe.
County planning officials defended their work and the report repeatedly Wednesday, saying it was completed in accordance with all rules and regulations.

Granite, a Northern California-based company, has proposed operating the mine within a 400-acre property that sits between the San Diego County line and Temecula's southern border. At full capacity, the 135-acre quarry is expected to generate 5 million tons of aggregate rock per year at the site.

According to Granite's projections, about 70 percent of the aggregate generated at Liberty Quarry would be headed south to San Diego County.

That projection has been used by the Riverside County Planning Department to state that the project is "environmentally superior" to not digging a mine, in part, because trucks that had been streaming through Southwest Riverside County from quarries in Corona and other points north of Temecula will be removed from the region's roads, improving regional air quality.

Opponents speak
Other tribal representatives said the county ignored the significance of their sacred sites, which includes the potential quarry site, as a "historical resource."
Responding to a question posed by Commissioner John Petty, county archaeologist Leslie Mouriquand said there were no tangible artifacts found on the site, which is part of the Pechanga creation story.

Noting that there are maps, field notes and recorded oral histories that back up the importance of the land to the Pechanga, Petty asked, "Are we that linear that we have to go find something on the site?" The crowd, which included numerous tribe members, applauded him vigorously.

Tribal officials are scheduled to meet Thursday with county officials in Riverside to continue discussing this issue.

During SDSU's presentation, Matt Rahn, director of the reserve's field station program, underscored the uniqueness and importance of the reserve and how it can't be reproduced or replaced.

"The quarry is incompatible with the existing sensitive uses in the station," he said.

Answering questions from the commissioners on exactly how the quarry might affect the station's science and the environment inside the reserve, Rahn said there's no way to know without actually digging a quarry to study those effects.
Half-jokingly, he said that if the quarry were approved, the station might be used for just that purpose.

Researchers' concerns
Kelcey Stricker and John Graham, researchers at the reserve, later explained how the quarry's noise, light and proposed location would affect their work, which involves tracking the migration of mountain lions and other animals and studying the behavior and specific vocal signatures of birds.
In response to a question from Commissioner James Porras about whether animals that live near the quarry site would adapt to live with the project, Stricker said some species, especially mountain lions, will leave the area instead of adapting or learning to live with the noise and light.
The firsthand experiences of Stricker and Graham prompted numerous questions from Petty, who wanted to know how the mine would affect the animals' behavior.

Petty asked, "Have the impacts been adequately addressed?"
Stricker's reply was succinct: "Uh, no."

Temecula's roster of speakers included an economist, a geologist, an air quality expert, a traffic engineer, City Manager Shawn Nelson and attorneys who said the county's environmental report falls short of the state's legal requirements for environmental review, which mandate that any findings in a review need to be backed up by facts.

"There are substantial gaps in the most elementary analysis of the evidence," said Peter Thorson, Temecula's city attorney.

On the claim of reduced truck traffic, which is one of the main benefits of the project that supporters cite, traffic engineer Chris Gray of Fehr & Peers of Walnut Creek said the traffic counts conducted by Granite and Urban Crossroads did not adequately explain where the trucks were coming from and where they were going. He added that the numbers, and the extrapolation that shows a reduction in 16 million truck miles, were based on assumptions made in 2005 that do not match up with more recent counts taken in 2009.

Traffic concerns
According to Granite and Urban Crossroads, 1,200 trucks were projected to be rolling through the Temecula area each day on Interstate 15 in the mid-2000s, a figure that was arrived at by making an estimate based on counts taken in 2004 and 2005.
Gray said a count taken in 2009 shows only 449 trucks per day, and he said that the data included in the environmental report should not be relied upon or cited.
"Instead of collecting new data along the way, they simply relied on assumptions," Gray said. "If this issue was so important, why was it not studied in detail? Why didn't the study compare the Liberty Quarry site against other sites in San Diego County? Instead, they just adjusted the count upward when new counts could have been taken."

Heidi Rous, an air quality expert, followed Gray. She called the idea that the project would be "environmentally superior" to not digging a quarry "patently untrue."

"It is illogical," she said.
Earlier in her presentation, she said the engineer who put together the studies that show pollution levels wouldn't exceed state and federal levels manipulated the data. She said the engineer used information to measure the background air pollution from a monitoring station that routinely registers better air quality than that shown by neighboring stations.

Economic concerns
During other parts of the morning session, an economist countered a study that was prepared for Granite by showing that the costs to the area ---- lower property values and a decline in tourism ---- would far outweigh, by millions of dollars, the benefits: payment of fees and royalties, sales tax, jobs created, etc.
The geologist, Kerry Cato, said there is no shortage of aggregate rock in Riverside County, and that it would be more efficient to consider sites closer to the targeted market area, since most of the aggregate is expected to be shipped to San Diego County.

Cato also criticized the way Riverside County reviewed how the project could affect the area's groundwater. As summarized by Commissioner Petty, "They're saying it's a rock bowl that's not going to leak. You're saying there is all sorts of potential for leaking."

Cato agreed and said additional studies were needed to determine how the project could affect the area's water supply. He said there should be some discussion about the possibility of a quarry lake sitting just west of the freeway.
Kicking off Temecula's presentation, City Manager Nelson provided a preview of the city's bullet points, a collection of criticism that, he said, points to a fundamental flaw in how the project has been pitched by Granite.
"What they have done can be defined in one word: deception," he said.
Roth said Granite is tentatively slated to be allowed to present rebuttal testimony at the next hearing, which will be held, if needed, on June 29.
City Attorney Thorson said Granite might claim that Temecula's criticism amounts to "nit-picking," and that a disagreement among experts is not a reason to invalidate the environmental impact report.
"Not true," he said. "These impacts are not theoretical."