Send your donations to the Stop The Trucks! Coalition – c/o The Ojai Chamber of Commerce, P.O. Box 1134, Ojai, CA, 93024, or you may also walk your contribution into the Chamber’s offices anytime during the business week, at 201 S. Signal Street — in the Ojai Festivals building — in downtown Ojai.
HELP US STOP THE TRUCKS!
By Michael Shapiro, Chairman / Stop The Trucks! Coalition
Repeating what I wrote last week in my Ojai Valley News Guest Editorial — various news reports about the recent Santa Barbara-based Diamond Rock Mine didn’t tell the full story. It is simply not true that the Stop the Trucks! Coalition prevailed during the recent hearings before the Santa Barbara Planning Commission, and that’s why we’re appealing the decision of the Santa Barbara Planning Commission to approve the Diamond Rock Mine’s Environmental Impact Report (EIR). If we don’t, it paves the way for the granting of their Conditional Use Permit (CUP) and simultaneously strips-away any of Ojai’s legal rights to challenge them in the event that they “change their minds” and hundreds of rock and gravel mine-transport trucks end-up careening through Ojai after all.

Here’s what happened: In the interest of saving all parties great expense throughout any lengthy challenge and approval process, the Stop The Trucks! Coalition negotiated an agreement with the Diamond Rock Mine that we would not challenge their Environmental Impact Report (EIR) and Conditional Use Permit (CUP) as long as they didn’t send mine truck transports through Ojai, and that the Stop The Trucks! Coalition maintained the rights to legally challenge them if they ever did. Unfortunately, not only did the Santa Barbara Planning Commission end-up approving the Diamond Rock Mine’s EIR, but it also granted them the freedom and flexibility to rely on that approval even if they sought to modify their CUP in order to “flip-flop” and send mine transport trucks up and down Route 33 and through Ojai at any time in the future, and there would be nothing that we could do to stop them.
Indeed — unless their ruling is challenged and we win a reversal, Ojai and the Stop The Trucks! Coalition have been stripped of any rights to challenge and review their EIR and CUP as it relates to the health, safety, welfare and environmental havoc that such mine transport truck traffic through Ojai would cause. And this is why our appeal is so important. And although the appeal process will take time and lots of funding – we feel we have a good chance of prevailing as long as we continue to have your generous financial support to stay the course.
To compound the stresses and challenges now facing Ojai and the Stop The Trucks! Coalition, we’re now simultaneously facing an aggressive Ventura County-based mining operation – the Ozena Valley Ranch Rock & Gravel Mine – and what also appears to be a well-entrenched Ventura County Planning staff hell-bent on white-washing innumerable past CUP violations by the Ozena applicant and somehow granting them a renewed CUP and expanded production, regardless of those violations.

Please understand that we’ve not been handed any victory from anyone, and that several more rock and gravel mines remain waiting in the wings to join both Diamond Rock and Ozena – whom they may perceive are winning the rights to send any numbers of huge rock and gravel mine transports through Ojai with impunity.
The struggle to preserve the traditional ambiance, character, economy, environmental health, safety and welfare of Ojai is rapidly building to a critical mass, and if we are to prevail both legally, administratively and politically, we must continue to have your generous financial and political support. It’s obvious that our opponents aren’t interested in “good faith negotiations.” They’d rather mislead, and in the process, try to wear us down and cause us to spend more money and time than would otherwise be necessary. Well, now – let’s make it perfectly clear to our rock and gravel mine opponents that what’s “good for the goose, is also good for the gander!” And while I’m not implying that we would ever spend legal and consulting funds unwisely, we have to maintain the ability to prevail against their unscrupulous tactics.
I recall the management, consultants and even some Ventura County planning staffers also thinking that Ojai would end-up losing its ability to prevail against Waste Management’s huge Weldon Canyon garbage landfill project planned for the entrance to the Ojai Valley. We didn’t buckle then, and with your continued generosity and support now – we will prevail again in this latest and most onerous challenge to Ojai’s preservation as that example of a small, California town of yesteryear… a town who’s economy and environment is supported by education, the arts and tourism, and not rampant, destructive, dangerous and unhealthful industrialization — which is exactly what massive gravel and rock mine transport trucking would end up causing.
Yes – we continue to count on your generous and ongoing financial support to STOP THE TRUCKS! now – as much as ever.
Send your donations to the Stop The Trucks! Coalition – c/o The Ojai Chamber of Commerce, P.O. Box 1134, Ojai, CA, 93024, or you may also walk your contribution into the Chamber’s offices anytime during the business week, at 201 S. Signal Street — in the Ojai Festivals building — in downtown Ojai.
For continuous updates on all the news regarding this issue, don’t forget to also log-on to the Ojai Post and “click” on “Stop The Trucks! Coalition.
Thanks so much.
Michael Shapiro
Chair – Stop The Trucks! Coalition

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