4/5/2005: Let’s begin with a few facts. RMC Pacific Materials of Pleasanton, California, is proposing to destroy half of Jesse Morrow Mountain. Jesse Morrow Mountain is on the north side of Highway 180 (designated a scenic highway by the federal, state, and county governments.) You see it when you’re on the way to Kings Canyon/Sequoia right after you take the hard left turn on 180 and head due east toward the Sierra Nevada. It’s the huge mountain just past the old schoolhouse, now a restaurant, the Sherwood Inn. The south face of the mountain looks out over Sanger and Reedley and its north face drops down to the little community of Piedra and what’s left of the Kings River.

RMC proposes a one-hundred-year plan to provide for local gravel needs by mining 400 acres of the mountain to a depth of several hundred feet. Once a week, the mountain will be blasted open with dynamite to “produce the desired aggregate.” An “aggregate processing plant” (i.e., a rock crushing machine) will be built on site. There will be in excess of eighty daily round-trip deliveries by gravel truck with operations occurring approximately 315 days a year. Currently RMC has not been granted a permit to begin operations, and they have not filed an environmental impact report on the project. See the story HERE