We recognize the need for aggregate to support our county’s infrastructure. However, we make this call to attention to determine if this is an appropriate site for extraction.

Looking Northeast across Bay Hill Road toward Bodega

The property has a perennial stream which supports riparian corridors. The edge of the site is two miles from the coast, which means that runoff from the operation would drain through the Quanlin watershed through Cheney Gulch into Bodega Harbor. The view of the property from Bay Hill Road has been designated be the county as a scenic corridor Sonoma-county.org; however the pit would be visible from both Highway 1 as well as Bay Hill Road, Estero Lane, Taylor Lane, Fitzpatric Lane, and Bodega Harbor Development. There are multiple historically significant sacred Miwok sites as well as Bodega Cliff. The land is home to endangered stealhead, owls, tiger salamanders, coyotes, badgers, fox, bobcat, mountain lion, deer, red-tailed hawk, cooper's hawk, swanson's hawk, bald eagles, golden eagle, osprey, perigrine falcon, great blue heron, brown pelican, cranes, duck, geese, kestrel, snowy plovers, and a multiplicity of native and endangered plants and insects.

The Sonoma County Open Space District Land Trust was prepared to purchase the property, but failed to do so before the Dutra corporation signed a lease on the eighth of September 2005. The lease gives the corporation the option to purchase the ranch on that same day of this year. If the purchase goes through, the mine could blast up to 13,000,000 cubic yards of sandstone and siltstone from the coastal prairie habitat.

This sandstone is of high quality because of its proximity to the alluvial source (ocean floor,) which placed it as a "resource of regional significance" under the 1981 state Aggregate Resource Management (ARM) plan. Under this plan all other county and state regulations are bypassed in the "public interest" of mining to attain aggregate.

Ranch from Bay Hill Road

Local citizens should be aware that this sets a precedent for corporate invasion of the west county. There would be around the clock blasting, noise pollution, and dust. DUTRA GROUP has publicly announced that large scale road construction will be done on the county scenic Bay Hill Road as well as Highway 1. Additionally the ARM plan states that a bypass road may be built as "mitigation" for traffic on Highway 101 in operations extracting "minerals of regional significance."

Local citizens should be aware that the plausible traffic increase is absolutely unprecedented in the area. Dutra Group’s San Rafael Quarry runs approximately six hundred trucks each day. At this rate, assuming that the trucks are the largest five axle tandem trailers available which carry at greatest capacity 25 tons, there could be theoretically one truck passing every minute for fifty straight weeks. Traffic will affect the entire region; property values will drop and the tourism economy will be greatly marred.

Quinlin Gulch on the Ranch from Bay Hill Road

It's important to understand the door that would be opened by permitting this corporation to take hold in this community. The Dutra Group is a multi billion dollar corporation "with a heritage of over four generations of providing services to its ever expanding clientele" (Dutragroup.com) which supplies aggregate throughout the Bay Area. They were hired by the Corps of Engineers to dredge in Bodega Harbor earlier this year; as well the Dutra Group Haystack landing Asphalt and Recycling Facility on the Petaluma River is under proposal for massive expansion which includes a conveyer and distribution system and stockpiled aggregates. On August 17, 2006, Dutra Group was charged with illegal dumping in San Francisco Bay (See Article).

Bodega Bay is a model of a pristine coastal community. The citizens of the community hereby unite against the extraction of aggregate from this site in the name of the dire neccessity to protect what native habitat, coastal open space, and agricultural land has survived thus far.

*Banner background: View south to Ranch from Coleman Valley Road