Blasting a butte: Oakridge residents take water, air concerns to commissioners, again 

Sabrina Ratkowski drank Coca-Cola out of a glass bottle in uptown Oakridge as the sun slipped behind the mountains. 

At the golden hour, she watched the First Friday Art Walk festivities from a brewhouse patio. 

Musicians strummed instruments on the lawn of City Hall. The local theater group threw a costume sale in a courtyard. A dance troupe glided down the street, broomsticks twirling — a special appearance for the October walk. 

“I’m an honorary witch, but I got a little busy,” Ratkowski said, explaining why she wasn’t performing with the troupe. 

Ratkowski has been busy with something that loomed large above her from where she sat Friday, Oct. 2, at a picnic table outside the Three Legged Crane. In the faint alpenglow, she turned to look at TV Butte, visible over the rooftops, a forested hillside that flattens at nearly 1,800 feet. 

In a decade-long dispute, Oakridge residents, including Ratkowski, have pushed back on the butte becoming a site to mine gravel. According to its proposal, Old Hazeldell Quarry LLC would blast volcanic rock for 35 to 50 years. The applicants cite a desire to create economic opportunity and provide locally-sourced gravel. 

Residents believe the operation, which towers over trail systems, would harm the evolution of the recovering timber town into the “Mountain biking capital of the Pacific Northwest.” 

They also worry about the city’s drinking water supply, drawn from an aquifer connected to the butte, where a closed landfill also lies, possibly containing hazardous chemical waste, according to state and University of Oregon assessments. 

“I’m not against quarries. I’m against things that could have very real potential negative impacts to us, which covers a lot of bases,” Ratkowski said. “The pile of negative implications is too great.” 

Ratkowski is preparing, once again, to drive west on Highway 58 into Eugene to testify before the Lane County Commissioners during a public hearing Oct. 20. Commissioners eventually will decide whether county zoning at the site can be changed to allow for a gravel quarry.

It’s a decision they made before. 

What is proposed and why the application is taking so long 

TV Butte likely earned its name from the power lines that run to a nearby TV and radio tower. 

Old Hazeldell Quarry LLC, a company under Crown Properties, a family trust for the King family, of King Estate Winery and Ed King, first proposed the quarry on the butte in 2015. 

Old Hazeldell Quarry LLC owns the land where TV Butte stands. Crown Properties LLC, purchased nearly 29 acres of the area from the city of Oakridge in 2011 and already owned land surrounding that parcel, city records show. At the time, city officials were told the land would be used for timber harvest.

The quarry application calls for extracting about 46 of the 107 acres on the mining site, digging into high-quality volcanic rock deposits — specifically andesite, formed as magma and lava cool. The site contains nearly 17 million tons of andesite, commonly used in construction. 

In its financial analysis, the application states the quarry’s gravel could lower development and infrastructure costs for the Oregon Department of Transportation and Lane County Public Works, which would otherwise have to import gravel.

Consultants estimate at peak production — 500,000 tons of gravel per year — trucks would make 43 round trips every day. At its processing facility, located southwest of the butte, a generator-powered machine has the capacity to crush 350 tons of rock an hour. 

The decade–old proposal has faced repeated votes, appeals and delays since its 2015 inception with widespread community opposition.

More than 10 years of activity, including past and present commissioners, opposition from longtime community members and city officials, has led to this point. Commissioners have reopened a public hearing at 1:30 p.m., Oct. 20. 

The hearing will consider a proposal for the quarry that requires amending the county’s rural comprehensive plan and allowing it. It also seeks a zone change from nonimpacted forest land to impacted forest land. That decision, like others before it, is likely to face appeals. 

Lookout Eugene-Springfield emailed and left voice messages for Bill Kloos, a land use attorney listed as an agent for the project, requesting an interview with him or King. They did not respond. 

Throughout the nearly 1,600-page quarry application, Old Hazeldell Quarry LLC outlined explicit community commitments, including “state and local tax contributions are estimated at over $137,000 per year” when fully operational. It also commits to safety, including that analysis in the application demonstrate potential conflicts will be “minimized using reasonable and practicable measures” in accordance with Oregon law. 

Government agencies have not conducted their own environmental assessment of the impact, which has not been legally required.  

The dump, the water, and the air 

In an effort to provide a third-party preliminary report, students in an advanced course at University of Oregon’s School of Planning, Public Policy, and Management developed an independent environmental assessment with professor oversight. That assessment, completed last year, is part of a collection of 17 reports supported by the national Sustainable Cities Institute addressing various issues in Oakridge. 

The 107-acre quarry area will be mined in three phases with a processing area, where the crushing machine sits, next to a fenced-off closed municipal landfill, according to the UO assessment based on planning details in Old Hazeldell Quarry LLC’s application. The assessment states: 

“It is not anticipated that there is a high potential for a landfill landslide to occur. The crusher placement within 25 feet of the landfill, however, warrants potential investigation into the stability of the landfill considering the additional vibrations from crushing activity, explosives, and heavy machinery.”

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality screened the landfill — once called the Dunning Road Dump — through mapping and records in 2016, determining that it “could cause human and environmental impacts.” A memo from the department states: 

“It is not known what if any contamination exists as the landfill portion of the site. Because of the historic use of the site as a landfill, it is possible that hazardous materials were dumped at the Site. Likely contaminants would include; petroleum related compounds, PCBs, solvent related compounds, dioxins/furans, heavy metals, and possibly pesticides.”

PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, are known as “forever chemicals,” because they don’t easily – if ever – degrade. That resistance is similar to dioxins, a group of chemicals formed during industrial processes such as treating timber products and making pulp and paper. PCBs and dioxins each are associated with an increase in cancer. 

The DEQ memo recommended testing, which has yet to be conducted, according to the agency. This leaves an open question about the contaminants in the landfill, which closed around 1970, and how they might impact stormwater or leachate, according to the UO assessment. 

Leachate forms when liquid, such as rainwater, moves through solid materials like trash and picks up chemicals and contaminants along the way. The UO assessment states:  

“It is unknown if the historic landfill contains contaminants that might impact stormwater or leachate flowing from the historic landfill, which has the potential to flow from TV Butte, eventually draining into Salmon Creek, and potentially impacting the quality of the river and the alluvial aquifer from which the City of Oakridge draws its water supply.” 

An alluvial aquifer is like a subterranean lake, and within it, is loose gravel, silt, sand, and clay. 

A separate, preliminary study in UO’s collection examined Oakridge’s aquifer, which supplies drinking water to more than 3,000 people.  

At 25 feet deep, the aquifer underlies Salmon Creek before it converges with the Middle Fork of the Willamette River. Using ground radar, student researchers found that the water is moving more slowly into the aquifer than 20 years ago, suggesting declining groundwater availability. The study’s conclusion states:

“A more comprehensive study of the Oakridge Alluvial Aquifer will require additional water well sampling … These additional surveys would provide the City of Oakridge with more insights into how the city’s municipal water supply may change in the coming years as well as clarity regarding interactions between the aquifer and the andesite (rock) beneath TV Butte.” 

Water is part of the strategy to suppress dust from the mining activities that could become pollution. The Environmental Protection Agency calls particulate pollution, or particulate matter, among the most dangerous forms because it can be inhaled into the lungs, which can cause respiratory problems and potentially cancer. 

Oakridge has long worked to address its air quality, which stagnates in the mountain valley. Improvement projects in recent years have received $7.6 million in EPA grants. 

For the last few summers, wildfire smoke has brought in high concentrations of particulate matter, sometimes lingering for weeks. In the winter, more smoke follows from wood stoves, which many residents use for heat. 

Truck traffic could also kick up dust. 

The Lane Regional Air Protection Agency does not measure specifics in particulate matter, such as silica, which can come from rock and is associated with lung cancer. The agency would issue a permit for the crusher, but the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries regulates overall operations. That agency issued a permit for the quarry in 2017, which could be amended depending on the outcome of the commission’s next step. 

Oakridge officials lobby county, so far unsuccessfully

Air pollution is among the top concerns for residents and officials alike who fear impacts to their quality of life, said James Cleavenger, Oakridge city administrator.

Old Hazeldell Quarry LLC estimates its facility will support 10 to 15 full-time jobs and generate more than $248 million in labor income over the decades it’s fully in operation.

Cleavenger believes that most, if not all, of those jobs will go to people living outside the community. Instead, it could harm the city’s tourism industry, he said, which has activities like mountain biking and an annual Sasquatch Summer Fest.

“Who wants to be riding their bike with explosions going on six days a week? Who wants to be riding their bike when you have silica dust in the air?” Cleavenger said in an interview with Lookout. 

A council vote can’t stop the project, because the county, not the city, makes the decision. Yet the City Council voted unanimously to formally oppose the project — three different times from 2021 to 2025 as the proposal worked its way through the land use process. 

Over that time, opposition to the project crossed political boundaries within the community, Cleavenger said.

“Democrat, Republican — it doesn’t matter,” he said. “We’re all against this TV Butte project because it just makes no sense.  No economic impacts will be seen in the city. It’s going to ruin the air.”

Cleavenger also pointed to how campaign donations flowed to county commissioners in the years since the project application started. 

Campaign contributions to all five commissioners 

Lane County Commissioner Pat Farr spent part of his childhood living on a family farm along the Trask River in Tillamook County. Across the river, a gravel pit operated.  

“It would start crushing rock at sometimes 6 o’clock in the morning,” he said. “It is loud, you know, and we couldn’t really do anything about it, but it interrupted our sleep.”

To that end, he said, he’ll look at the project’s strategies to minimize impact on the community, including noise and dust or air quality. 

Farr said concerns emerge anytime there’s large development near a population center and they should be heard.

“I think that as the matters come up, it’s essential that if the quarry is to be developed, that the concerns of the local citizens are addressed,” Farr said. 

Each of the five commissioners received donations from King or his company, Crown Properties, according to campaign filings.

Farr, who voted in support of the project in 2025, received a $10,000 donation in 2023 and an in-kind donation of wine valued at $600 for a campaign event in 2024, campaign filings show.

Farr said his early interactions with King came long before that. In 2004, King sat on the board of the nonprofit Food for Lane County, which hired Farr as its executive director that year. 

“I know Ed King far more for donating thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds of food and thousands and thousands of dollars to Food for Lane County,” Farr said. 

King’s contributions to other commissioners:

• Laurie Trieger and Heather Buch, who voted against the project, have not received donations since the 2025 vote. However, Buch’s campaign received $2,500 in 2018, when she ran for her first term. Trieger received $1,000 in 2020. 

• Ryan Ceniga, the current commission chair, voted in support of the project. He has received $22,000 combined in the 2022 and 2026 election cycles.

• David Loveall voted in support of the project: Received $10,000 in the 2022 and 2026 election cycles.

“Campaign contributions come from people and businesses who support your vision and your priorities,” Loveall said. “My priorities have always been business.”

The ‘worst scenario happened’ 

Formal communication between Ed King and quarry representatives has been limited, according to Cleavenger, when it comes to sharing information with city officials and residents. 

Around the time Old Hazeldell Quarry LLC filed its first applications with the county and the geology department in 2015, the company held two meetings with Oakridge residents.  

Linda McMahon, who lived in Oakridge most of her life, was there. During the art walk, McMahon sat with Ratkowski on the brewhouse patio, and she recalled what she heard. 

“They invited everybody, brought us pizzas, sodas, and there were several representatives from the quarry,” McMahon said, who recalled a representative from the geology and mining department speaking.” His first statement was, ‘This will be good for Oakridge.'”

McMahon didn’t buy that then, and she still doesn’t now. 

During the summer, she and Ratkowski read an Oregon Public Broadcasting report about water testing that revealed dangerous contaminants in Crook County. 

Families who lived near a gravel and sand mining site reported black sludge coating toilets and sinks, rashes after bathing, and unexplained livestock deaths. The allegations surfaced in a lawsuit they brought against one of the largest construction materials companies in the region, Knife River. 

“In their situation, they (families in Crook County) have been fighting for years, and the quarry still denies that it’s anything to do with them?” said Ratkowski.

“I’ve pointed out similarities to people and said, ‘look, their worst scenario happened,” she said.

Ratkowski drank her cola, next to a bottle filled with tap water from home. 

“We’re going to keep fighting,” Ratkowski said. “The motivation is just love of this place and the people.”