The Ojai Post

The Ventura County Planning Agency has issued a Notice of an Environmental Impact Scoping Meeting for the Ozena Valley Ranch Mine to be held in the Chaparral High School Auditorium at 6:00 pm on Wednesday, May 6th.

Scoping Meetings are an important forum to establish the breadth of a EIR. This one time meeting provides Ojai an opportunity to comment on issues that must be addressed in the EIR, and to the extent that the County has not adequately identified those issues, to give the reasons why the issue must be addressed, and how it should be addressed.

If a "fair argument" is made that a significant impact may occur as a result of the Project, legally the County must analyze the issue regardless of what Ozena wants or the cost of such reports. Establishing a record on such matters is vitally important.

Issues to be discussed include but are not limited to the following impacts upon the totality of the haul route from Lockwood Valley to the 101: Air Quality; Toxic Wastes; Road Safety; Road Damage; Hours of Operation; Hours of Allowable Trucking through the Ojai Valley; Establishing a Restricted Zone that actually protects critical parts of the Ojai Valley, such as our schools, hospital, medical clinic, senior mobile home parks and condo complexes, the "Y" Shopping Center; and provide for Reasonable and Feasible Monitoring and Compliance, etc.

We need to have every single person who opposes gravel trucking through the Ojai Valley to attend and pack the room. This is one of our very few opportunities left to make our feelings about this project known directly to the Planning Agency. If we fail to act now as a community, it may be too late to act later! Please be there and bring all of your friends and family!

The current proposal for a modification of the existing permit would DOUBLE the amount of trucking through the Ojai Valley from Cuyama that we experienced in 2007 - 2008 and strip away almost every single protection we have fought for over the past two and a half years!

The Stop the Trucks! Coalition will also be sending around "Individual Petitions" for concerned Ojai residents to forward to the Planning Division. These petitions will list many of the specific issues that must be examined in the EIR and/or reviewed by the Planning Division in their consideration of these permit applications.