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Judge upholds contentious Anchor Point gravel pit permit denial

Shaylon Cochran/KDLL

A 2018 decision to deny a gravel pit permit in Anchor Point has been upheld in a second appeal.

The case is between property owners who want to dig a 27-acre gravel pit and a group of 30 of their neighbors, and has been in debate for more than five years. The property owners, Emmitt and Mary Trimble, first applied for a permit in 2018 under the name Beachcomber LLC and were denied by the Kenai Peninsula Borough Planning Commission. The commission sided with the neighbors, who said they were concerned about the visual and audible impacts of the gravel pit.

It was a rare instance of the borough denying such a permit. Beachcomber appealed the case, and the Kenai Superior Court eventually handed the decision back to the planning commission, which again voted against the permit, 5–2 this year. Beachcomber again appealed, this time to the Office of Administrative Hearings.

As first reported by the Homer News, the decision in that case — released last Tuesday, Dec. 6 by Judge Lisa Toussaint — upholds the commission’s permit denial. It concludes that, “none of the arguments raised by Beachcomber’s appeal provide grounds to overturn the commission’s denial of the [permit].”

Beachcomber will have the opportunity to appeal its case to the Alaska Superior Court within 30 days of that decision.

The Beachcomber case has prompted a revision of the borough’s gravel pit regulations and a reconsideration of the planning commission’s discretion in making decisions about permitting. And the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly is currently working on that rewrite, which it plans to vote on in March. The rewrite has been the subject of much public debate, and has involved months of work and 40 proposed amendments.

Riley Board is a Report For America participant and senior reporter at KDLL covering rural communities on the central Kenai Peninsula.
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