May 1, 2009 - Lafarge North America’s application to work a sand & gravel deposit near the Canadian border with Sumas, Washington received a boost last Monday.

With a 5-4 in favour vote, Abbotsford City Council approved the slightly revised Lafarge application, reversing the 5-4 against vote by the same council only last month.

The turnaround was due in part to a 10 acre parcel of the farmland that was removed from the original application. The controversial parcel is owned by a councillor’s sister and may have represented a conflict of interest. Also, another councillor who had voted against the original application voted in support in the second vote.

As is so often the case in the aggregate licensing process, feelings run high on the potential impact on local water supplies and fugitive dust. The disturbance of class one farmland was also in the mix here, with only passing acknowledgment to the concept of aggregate extraction as an interim land use.

Sometimes it appears that only the names, locations and dates change in these debates, while the issues, or at least what are thought to be issues, remain similar regardless of location.

This particular application is striking insofar as there was a positive outcome for the applicant, at least for now. There is room for cautious optimism, but it seems clear that aggregate producers still have a long way to go to build general public trust and dispel some of the misconceptions about the industry.