Spoklie wants to expand gravel pit operation outside Glacier National Park

The owner of a gravel pit just outside Glacier National Park has proposed expanding the operation by tenfold, raising concerns about its impact to the Park and Park visitors.

Under a proposed amendment, owner Robert Spoklie has made an application to the state Department of Environmental Quality to expand his Belton Stage Road gravel pit from its current size of 2 acres up to 24 acres. The pit depth would also increase from 30 feet to 70 feet and it could use 22,000 gallons of water a day to wash gravel at the site for up to 140 days a year.

The pit would run six days a week from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. It is less than one-quarter mile from Glacier’s boundary and about 500 feet from the boundary of the Wild and Scenic River corridor of the Middle Fork of the Flathead.

The expansion also calls for the removal of 1.8 million cubic yards of gravel over the next 25 years.

“The Park is very concerned about the proposal to substantially expand a mine a quarter-mile from the Park boundary,” said spokeswoman Amy Vanderbilt. She said the Park would comment formally on the proposal. Concerns run the gamut from water and air quality to aesthetic considerations.

There are some conditions already on the plan. The site can only be mined 8 acres at a time and gravel crushing cannot occur from June 1 to Aug. 21 and from Nov. 15 to March 12 under the proposed amendment. An environmental assessment by the DEQ says that dust from the mine could impact Glacier. The mine itself is clearly visible from the Apgar Mountain Trail inside the Park.

Spoklie is also required to pave the Belton Stage Road north to U.S. Highway 2 and also put in a gravel bike path. It is estimated that trucks will make 22 trips a day to and from the plant.

The paving has already been completed. The bike path has not yet been built. Under the amendment, truck traffic from the pit can only go north, unless it is providing gravel to customers immediately to the south.

Belton Stage Road south of the pit is a mix of paved and unpaved road.

Most of the conditions in the expansion proposal actually come from a settlement agreement with Flathead County in 2007. At first, the county tried to stop the pit entirely, but that move was contrary to both state and local law, counselors found at the time, so they settled with Spoklie and his partnership, Spoklie and Hoover.

The settlement included most of the conditions listed above. It is just that Spoklie has now formally applied to amend his permit with the state to expand the mine. The DEQ, in the amendment environmental assessment, said it plans on approving the expansion.

Still, interested parties can submit public comments to the DEQ until 5 p.m. Friday, April 3 via e-mail at rsamdahl@mt.gov or by writing DEQ Industrial and Energy Minerals Bureau at 109 Cooperative Way, Suite 105, Kalispell, MT 59901.