Wrightwood residents fight a quarry they never saw coming

When residents of Wrightwood, a pine-studded village near Mt. Baldy, learned that a massive quarry was planned nearby, they followed a familiar playbook.

They organized a nonprofit, drafted a petition and raised funds for a legal challenge. They created T-shirts, ball caps and tote bags. They won support from powerful politicians.

But they may be seven years too late.

Population of the mountain community of Wrightwood is about 5,067 based on recent Census Bureau estimates.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

By the time they learned about the quarry planned on 420 acres in lush Lone Pine Canyon, where ultra-high purity calcium carbonate would be extracted by blasting down about 1,600 feet across open pits, the project had long ago received a key approval.

In 2019, after two meetings that flew so under the radar that only one member of the public spoke out, the San Bernardino County Planning Commission voted 3 to 2 to grant “vested rights” to the quarry, exempting the project from a comprehensive environmental review.

Jennifer Unibe, who works for the Lone Pine Canyon Protection Alliance, outside her home in Wrightwood.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

The nonprofit recently formed by the residents, called the Lone Pine Canyon Protection Alliance, has petitioned for a reconsideration of the Planning Commission’s decision. State wildlife officials have raised concerns about the potential impact of the quarry on bumblebees, desert bighorn sheep, golden eagles and other creatures. More than 7,600 people have signed a petition calling for the full environmental review.

The groundswell of opposition may still not be enough to stop the project.

“People have so many questions about how this happened, what is this about, what are they doing,” said Melissa Manning, who like many other residents fears the project will churn up toxic dust, pollute the water table and clog wildfire evacuation routes.

A quarry with vested rights must still clear a review of its reclamation plan for how the land will be restored once mining ends. This spring, county officials proposed adopting an abbreviated form of the review.

A local resident got wind of the development and posted about it on Facebook.

That gained the attention of Wrightwood Fire Safe Council President Jim Emery, who invited county officials to brief community members on the project.

Fire Safe Council meetings usually have fewer than 20 attendees, Emery said. This one, on April 21, was standing room only, filled with residents who had just found out about the plans for the quarry.

“In the room that evening, there was this concern, this shock,” said Jennifer Unibe, who stood in the back with her husband, making room for other residents as they streamed in. “It felt like a betrayal.”

As they listened to the county officials, they started to realize the uphill battle they faced.

Lyndsey Falb at her home in Wrightwood.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

“I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is a nightmare,’” said Lyndsey Falb, a stay-at-home mom and skincare business owner who has lived in Wrightwood for more than 30 years.

In the 1920s, Cajon Lime built a small plant on the quarry property, which is about four miles outside of Wrightwood. Descendants of Michael P. Hannin, who acquired the quarry in 1931, applied for vested rights in 2018, saying they had long intended to mine and process the lime deposits there.

A county geologist asserted that the application should be denied because mining had been dormant at the site long before the state’s landmark surface mining law took effect in 1976. But the Planning Commission, whose five members are appointed by San Bernardino County supervisors, ordered the geologist to revise his findings and granted the vested rights to the quarry.

Amelia Maldonado, a county land-use spokesperson, said in an email that while county staffers provide recommendations, the Planning Commission has the authority to reach its own determination.

At the first of the two 2019 Planning Commission hearings, then-quarry owner Neil McCarroll said his family had invested “many millions of dollars” in the mine.

“It has a superb material there that is of consequence to this county and to all of Southern California,” he said.

Shane Brickley, a property owner in Lone Pine Canyon, testified in support of the project, saying he hoped it would create jobs.

“I think that as a county, we should support business opportunities,” he said at the meeting.

In 2023, the owners sold the quarry to Grand Lone Pine Canyon Enterprises LLC, a West Covina company whose members include Treiss International Corp. The Taiwanese company bills itself as the largest supplier for China’s cold rolling industry, a manufacturing sector that shapes metals.

The mining would be conducted by Carlsbad-based California Carbonates Inc., with operations expected to last until at least 2175.

Michael Dickens, chief executive of California Carbonates, declined to comment, saying that he wanted to give Wrightwood residents time to mourn the deaths of four teens in a car crash earlier this month but that he planned to speak out publicly about the project in October.

Neither Paul Cook, the county supervisor who represents Wrightwood, nor Jonathan Weldy, the planning commissioner for the district, returned messages seeking comment.

For residents like Falb, Wrightwood is a refuge from the big city, where they can breathe clean air and see the stars at night, and kids still ride their bikes in the streets. Tourists come to relax in the quaint town, which has about 5,000 residents, and ski at Mountain High.

After the April community meeting, Falb and her mother exchanged contact information with other residents, eventually forming the Lone Pine Canyon Protection Alliance, with Falb serving as vice president and Unibe as secretary. Manning is a board member.

Resident Ed Kolar clears the area in front of his home in Wrightwood in December.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

As they launched their campaign against the quarry, “vested rights” soon became an indelible part of their vocabularies.

“Warm, comfortable, and ideal for those chilly mountain mornings when you wanted coffee but got an education on ‘Vested Rights Determinations’ from a Facebook group post,” reads the description for a hoodie with the alliance’s logo.

They’ve gained support from Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) and state Sen. Suzette Martinez Valladares (R-Acton), who represent the area, as well as Snowline Joint Unified School District Supt. Ryan Holman. All three officials sent letters to the county in May, calling for more scrutiny of the quarry.

“This project would have devastating and long-lasting consequences for the surrounding region and nearby communities,” Chu wrote, calling out concerns about pollution, traffic, noise and harm to wildlife.

In a 25-page letter to the county, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife also expressed concerns about the quarry, among them the potential impact on a wildlife corridor that is a critical link between the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountain ranges.

The county has failed to provide evidence that the quarry owner’s reclamation plan wouldn’t substantially interfere with animals’ movement, wrote Kim Freeburn, an environmental program manager with the department.

The reclamation plan was scheduled to go before the Planning Commission on Aug. 6, but the quarry owner requested a postponement, and a new date hasn’t been set, Lauren Howland, a spokesperson for San Bernardino County, wrote in an email.

In July, the Lone Pine Canyon Protection Alliance and three longtime residents, including Falb’s mother, Michele, filed a petition in court calling for the county to reconsider the decision granting the vested mining rights.

The petition argues that the decision was incorrect because mining hadn’t occurred on the property for years prior to 1976, said the alliance’s attorney, Henry Josefberg. That’s insufficient under state law to support a vested mining interest — intending to mine there eventually isn’t enough, he said.

Residents also received inadequate notice of the 2019 Planning Commission hearings, Josefberg said. The county notified three property owners within 1,300 feet of the proposed quarry and ran a notice in the San Bernardino Sun newspaper, which is not widely read by Wrightwood residents, he said.

The notice, he said, should have gone out to a larger group, considering that the project could affect communities miles away.

“If it were a warehouse, maybe 1,300 feet is enough,” Josefberg said. “But this is an open pit mine with great risk of aquifer impacts, particulate matter in the air, disturbing wildlife habitat — there’s a whole host of reasons why the notice should have gone out to many more.”

The county declined to comment on the pending litigation. An initial hearing is scheduled for Jan. 19.

County attorneys responded to the plaintiffs with a letter asserting that they should have appealed the Planning Commission’s approval of the vested rights to the county Board of Supervisors within 90 days of the decision.

But residents couldn’t have appealed a decision they didn’t know about, since the county had failed to notify them of the hearing, Josefberg said.

“It wasn’t like we didn’t want to comment,” Manning said. “It wasn’t like we didn’t care this whole time. It’s that nobody knew.”

A bartender chats with customers at the Wrightwood Inn.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

Wrightwood residents are used to pulling together to face catastrophe. In 2023, a blizzard dumped unprecedented amounts of snow, trapping people inside for days. The following year, the Bridge fire forced the town’s evacuation and burned 13 homes. The year after that, heavy rains pummeled the burn scar, burying buildings and vehicles under mud and debris.

Manning moved to Wrightwood from Orange County during the pandemic, roughly six years ago. During the Bridge fire, she sat in gridlocked traffic on Highway 2 — one of two primary routes out of town. The other is Lone Pine Canyon Road, where the quarry would be located.

Although it was the middle of the day, the sky was black. Ash fell like snow. Manning still has flashbacks — now, compounded by fear that the next evacuation could be complicated by heavy truck traffic.

“It’s frankly terrifying,” she said. “We could be burned alive.”