Proposed Eureka Gravel Mine

[Gavin]

Eureka Gravel Mine 

Saw this in the PD today. Winter Brothers wants permission to mine their 500+ Acres of bottom land in Eureka. I hope this does not get approved.

 

[moguy1973]

I think it's a bad deal all around.

 

[MoCarp]

they did that on a stretch off shoal creek a few years ago, not sure that they even had to get permits, ruined a nice stretch of shoal and washed in one of the best wintering holes where a spring ran in, understand we need gravel but.....

[MOFishwater]

That's right behind my home, where the bluff drops into the bottoms where they want to mine. I've lost a lot of sleep about it!  Eureka has some great people working against it, this has been turned down over and over and over, would be nice to put it to bed for good...

Winter Bros bought the land knowing it wasn't zoned for mining, it never has been, yet they say they're getting screwed over. 

That whole area has been underwater 2x in last 2 years. They claim they'd have no impact on the watershed, everything contained in settling pits, etc. Clearly that would not be of any use when mother nature comes knocking. Can only imagine the destruction the silting and debris washing into the river would cause. Bad all around...

 

Hope things go in our favor again. It's such a nice area.

 

 

[MoCarp]

it would be interesting to see if the money behind it lives local or not, many times people that fugally up pretty natural areas don't or won't live local...just wondering

[Mitch f]

 

I can’t help but think of this

[Gavin]

If they bought it without zoning in place....they took a gamble. Guess they could donate it as an extension of Route 66 State Park. Green space is preferable to another gravel mine pit on the lower Meramec.

 

[timinmo]

Love John Prine?

[MOFishwater]

5 hours ago, Gavin said:

If they bought it without zoning in place....they took a gamble. Guess they could donate it as an extension of Route 66 State Park. Green space is preferable to another gravel mine pit on the lower Meramec.

 

I've seen a map of all of their holdings, it's incredible all of the riverside land they've gobbled up goin up thru iowa and MN. 

They arent gonna donate jack; they said they've got over $1/2 B in gravel in there. 

They've already done some shady stuff in anticipation of getting in there. Somehow they were able to pull off a quiet land swap with MO State Parks (I guess? Not sure who would approve something like that) and, if you frequent the park or boat ramp, you'd have noticed they relocated the park gate east a few years ago. That was just enough land to get room for them to build a small road off the outer road to create an entrance to those fields. They built a gate and were already constructing the beginning of a road which sits idle right now. 

They plan to run it 6 days a week from something like 6am to 10pm if i recall correctly, 25-30 dump trucks an hour getting off at 109/44, getting back on 44 to WIlliams road exit since Eureka wouldn't allow them in our neighborhood roads (thankfully). Traffic is already out of hand with the growth of eureka and there's 2 HUGE new subdivisions coming so I dont know how they feel they'll be able to convince anyone to allow it. 

 

I'll keep you posted if there's any news. 

[MoCarp]

is any of this area some of the state owned land they nixed making new state parks? if so we know why now