Are Fresno County roads built from CEMEX-mined gravel? Let’s dig into this myth | Opinion

Fresno County depends on the last remaining gravel and sand mining operation on the San Joaquin River north of Fresno to build homes and roads.

That was the narrative presented July 18 by CEMEX employees and implied by certain elected officials before the Fresno County Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 to extend the company’s operating permits another three years.

Turns out like many narratives spun in the political sphere, this one is a myth.

Where every local home builder gets its gravel aggregate, I can’t possibly say. According to CEMEX’s own documents filed with the county, 28% comes from them.

Roads are a different matter. And not a single ounce of gravel mined from the San Joaquin River goes into the asphalt mixtures used by Fresno County to pave new or existing roads. Nor to patch them as a temporary fix.

Opinion

How can such an unequivocal statement possibly be accurate? It is because the county has exclusive contracts with two competing companies specifically for this purpose.

The companies with those exclusive contracts are Vulcan Materials and Granite Construction. Most of the asphalt mix used in county road construction is purchased from Vulcan, which mines gravel aggregate from the Kings River between Centerville and Minkler. The rest is purchased from Granite, which has an operation just outside Coalinga.

That’s where the gravel aggregate used to build and maintain Fresno County’s vast road network comes from. Not from CEMEX’s quarry and plant on the San Joaquin River operating nearly two decades past its agreed upon 2005 horizon date.

Michelle Avalos, spokesperson for the county Public Works and Planning Department, confirmed the Vulcan and Granite contracts via email and added three more companies (Calmat Co, Papich and Triangle Rock) that provide plant mix and aggregate for road projects. That’s five firms, none named CEMEX.

I realize CEMEX employees who testify at hearings are just defending their jobs. Can hardly blame them for that. But when they point to past projects built from material extracted from their quarry (i.e. Friant Dam, Bulldog Stadium, Chukchansi Park) and wonder where future gravel will come from, it’s simply not an accurate portrayal of the present.

Supervisors side with campaign donor

The comments of Supervisor Sal Quintero, who has received $4,500 in campaign contributions from CEMEX since 2019, were also mired in the past. That the company provided materials for Fresno projects when he was on the city council in the 1990s has no relevance today.

Meanwhile, Supervisor Steve Brandau ($7,500 from CEMEX interests since 2019) paid lip service to the environment while ultimately siding with its continued plunder.

“I want to honor that San Joaquin River,” Brandau said, “but I have another foot in the other world, too, which I have to look at, how we build and provide building materials for our entire county and really, our entire region.”

Clearly, there are other sources of competitively priced aggregate available locally. Or else Fresno County would be buying its road materials from CEMEX rather than five other companies that provide similar products. The county’s annual budget for road mix and aggregate totals more than $10 million.

Right?

Following the supervisor’s vote, the next bridge to be crossed is whether the city of Fresno will follow through on City Attorney Andrew Janz’s not-so-subtle hint of litigation.

The Fresno City Council, which has the authority over such matters, instructed Janz to prepare a lawsuit and also to seek a more diplomatic resolution with both Fresno County and CEMEX. If one can’t be reached, then members could vote in closed session whether to approve the actual filing.

I’m told, by sources speaking off the record, such a vote would be razor thin.

The city has a 30-day window to legally contest the Board of Supervisors’ decision, which expires several days after the Aug. 10 council meeting.

CEMEX skirts city impact fee

One arrow in Fresno’s quiver: CEMEX, despite being responsible for thousands of annual truck trips along Friant Road, hasn’t paid the city a single dollar in impact fees.

Not one dollar. In complete disregard of the wear and tear on city roads caused by those semi trucks heading to and from Highway 41, not to mention the traffic and air quality impacts. (CEMEX took over the Rockfield operation with its 2005 purchase of RMC Pacific Materials.)

Fresno drivers whose windshields over the decades have been chipped and cobwebbed by pebbles flying from the open trailers of those trucks might find that particularly galling.

More than a century’s worth of gravel production along the San Joaquin River has left very few deposits left to mine. Such was the reasoning in 2015 when the county approved a new 619-acre aggregate project on the Kings River owned by Vulcan, which ceased its San Joaquin River operation.

Occasionally I’m asked about a couple ponds visible from Friant Road across from Woodward Lake and Copper River. Those are old gravel pits owned by Vulcan currently undergoing reclamation. From what I’ve been told, Vulcan is going above and beyond its contractually obligated environmental mitigation measures to ensure the ponds are suitable for wildlife. (And hopefully, a new spot for public fishing.)

CEMEX should be the next, and last, to go. The company’s scheme to blast a 600-foot deep pit in order to continue mining for another 100 years is absurd.

California’s second-longest river must finally be allowed to recuperate. We have other local sources of aggregate, regardless of any myths propagated by CEMEX company employees and the politicians who eagerly take their campaign checks.