Cottonwood Golf Club’s owner has applied for a permit to turn three golf greens in Rancho San Diego into a sand mine for 10 years.
“This isn’t the place! This isn’t the place,” Barbara Oberndorfer said at a Wednesday night meeting, shaking her head.
If approved, an estimated eight or nine trucks per hour would roll in and out of the mine off Willow Glen Drive, according to the developer's environmental study.
Oberndorfer lives about a mile from the course.
“It doesn’t matter what time of the day they want to start. It's too much. It's just too much. We’re already bottlenecked up here as it is when it's school time or work time.”
To help with traffic congestion, one possibility is the trucks would run during off-peak times, between 4 and 6 a.m., then start back up again between 9:30 a.m and 3 p.m.
There will be a traffic impact report done that will determine what, if any, mitigation can be done.
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John Cloud of New West Development the company working with the property owner, said additional lanes or more traffic signals could be added.
Some residents signed petitions opposing the mine that's expected to generate 570,000 tons of sand per year.
That sand will be used to make concrete and asphalt for roads and building homes.
Two years after the plan starts the land would begin to be filled-in until the project ends.
“Nothing in the plan is in the best interest of the community," shouted one person in the crowd.
Bill Folsom doesn’t agree. He’s in favor of the sand mine, considering it could shorten transportation times for construction materials in the area.
“It does make it safer and get the pollution. The greenies should be happy to make the trucks drive a shorter distance,” he said.
The permitting process could take years before mining is allowed to begin.
The County Board of Supervisors will have the final say.
