Pointing at the houses dotted around an aerial photograph of his property, Jonathan Trappe, a Forestville quarry owner and operator, indicated how close his family’s homes are to the asphalt plant he hopes to build on the quarry site.
“My father lives there, my brother lives there, I live here and our kids swim in that pond,” he said. All are within about a half square mile. He was speaking in reference to the community pushback the plan had elicited that cited environmental and fire risk concerns.
The point was clear, but Trappe added it anyway: “Who has more incentive to make sure this plant is safe?”
Tucked into the sweeping bends of Pocket Canyon Highway just outside of Forestville reside two stone quarries that serve western Sonoma County’s construction industries, most crucially the road repair sector. The quarries sit on either side of that stretch of scenic Highway 116, and both are surrounded by protected waterways and wildlife.
Such is the topography of the area; one could blink and miss both of their entrances on the way into town, which itself could be concealed by a sneezing fit if they miss the sudden drop in speed limit. But over such a small town, with heavy trucks rolling through and the occasional explosion shattering its serenity, the quarries’ impact looms large. And some locals aren’t willing to see that impact increase.
The Trappe family owns Canyon Rock Quarry, which lies on the north side of the road. For the second time, Forestville residents have kindled opposition to the Trappes’ asphalt plant ambitions. The first time was in 1997, when the already costly endeavor was rendered financially non-viable by a lawsuit. Though a similar outcome this time may seem ideal on the surface, Forestvillians need only look over the road to see why they might be more cautious in what they wish for.
On the south side of Highway 116 is Canyon Rock’s main competition, the Bodean Forestville Quarry, so named by Belinda (a.k.a. “Bo”) and Dean Soiland when they added it to their Mark West quarry in 1997. Incidentally, that was the same year Canyon Rock began its quest to build an asphalt plant.
Back then, the asphalt plant was included in the Trappes’ application to extend and expand their quarrying permit for Canyon Rock. The community action group Forestville Citizens for Sensible Growth took the Trappes to court, and, in 2010 after a 12-year battle, partially won. Though extension of the quarry permit was granted, the asphalt plant was blocked on the grounds that Canyon Rock’s environmental impact report (EIR) was inadequate.
In addition to shelving the asphalt plant, Canyon Rock was ordered to pay $213,229 in litigation fees and $16,000 per year to mitigate the quarry’s impact on the town of Forestville, according to the settlement agreement between Canyon Rock, Sonoma County Board of Supervisors and Citizens for Sensible Growth.
“It’s been a multigenerational project,” said Trappe, who couldn’t put a figure on how much his family has spent on the decades-long effort to get the county to greenlight the plant. That first environmental impact report alone cost Canyon Rock more than $500,000 in 1997. With another one currently in the process of review, and with Kit Cole—a publicist the Trappes have brought in to help convey to the people of Forestville that their plans pose no threat—on hand at the quarry, Trappe has clearly pumped significant further investment into the project.
Sharon Martinelli, a former member of Citizens for Sensible Growth (CSG), is today a member of the new action group that opposes Canyon Rock’s renewed asphalt aspirations.
“We have currently hired a San Francisco attorney, and formed the nonprofit Russian River Community Cares (RRCC) to fight this proposal,” Martinelli said in a written statement.
Attempting to head off similar litigation at the pass, Bodean voluntarily began paying mitigation funds, at an undisclosed rate per ton of rock that rolls through the town, around the same time Canyon Rock was ordered to pay theirs.
Caught in the middle is Lucy Hardcastle, president of the Forestville Planning Association, the nonprofit organization that receives the impact mitigation funds from both quarries and administers their spending on town projects such as the new town park and schools. “There is some feeling in town that we take blood money,” Hardcastle said, “but there are a lot of town resources that come from the quarries. We’re a quarry town.”
Bodean’s proactive measures are rumored among Forestville residents to have taken a self-serving turn when it partially funded the first lawsuit against Canyon Rock. “I was shocked by that. I didn’t think that was ethical,” Hardcastle said. The ethics became even murkier in 2001 when, according to its website, Bodean acquired its own asphalt plant in Santa Rosa, which it hopes to move to Windsor in the near future.
Dean Soiland did not respond when asked to confirm his company’s association with the case brought by CSG a decade ago, or whether he is involved with RRCC in opposing Canyon Rock’s application this time. It may just be that he has bigger fish to fry.
According to the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, Bodean faces $8.6 million in fines for failing to manage the storm run-off from its Mark West quarry. This prospect preceded, if not prompted, the Soilands’ decision to sell the company to CRH, a multinational conglomerate based out of Dublin, Ireland, and one of the largest construction material producers in the world; though crucially, they retained ownership of the land and liability for the water board’s complaint.
Water board officials say proceedings regarding the storm run-off matter have been adjourned until late March. Though the price CRH paid for Bodean Co. remains undisclosed, the scale of the acquisition suggests it likely exceeds the potential fine by a comfortable margin. Still, whether Forestville is better off having one of its family-owned businesses sold off to such a huge corporation is an open question.
Needless to say, with 2024 earnings of $6.9 billion, CRH could have paid this fine out of petty cash, and will have far greater resources to plumb to contest any future regulation or resistance to their plans.
Bodean’s new general manager, John Reid, a CRH employee for the past 30 years, is already considering the inevitable backlash he expects when the asphalt plant included in the acquisition moves from Santa Rosa to Windsor. “Any time there is an asphalt plant involved, there is going to be opposition,” Reid said.
While the EIR that could make or break Canyon Rock’s permit request is in review, RRCC is taking the fight to every public forum its members can attend. RRCC members are often seen manning tables at farmers’ markets and other public gatherings to hand out flyers making their case against the proposed asphalt plant.
In October of last year, Martinelli and RRCC’s president, Derek Trowbridge, attended a town hall with State Sen. Mike McGuire hosted by Sonoma County Fire District’s Windsor Fire Station No. 3, bringing the issue to the senator’s attention during the Q&A.
RRCC members attended, en masse, a Jan. 10 Board of Supervisors meeting to ensure the board was keeping them in mind. This show of force was accompanied by a letter sent from the office of RRCC’s San Francisco attorney, Kevin Bundy of Shute, Mihaly and Weinberger LLP, containing accusations of Canyon Rock’s historical failure to meet their regulatory obligations. Canyon Rock sent their own letter detailing their history of compliance in rebuttal.
A recent email sent to RRCC supporters called for a similar showing at Supervisor Linda Hopkins’ town hall at El Molino Library in Forestville on March 27. Since a decision on the asphalt plant EIR is not due until 2026, RRCC leadership advised in the email that attendees should attack Canyon Rock on the broader issues laid out in the letter to the Board of Supervisors during the question period, suggesting that the intended target of the group isn’t limited to the asphalt plant, but rather includes the company as a whole.
Websites published by all parties duel for public sympathy, as do the many ads, articles and opinions featured in several local news outlets. Canyon Rock paid for a few of them. Most others are sympathetic to RRCC, with some hoping to simmer down tensions among divided Forestvillians.
RRCC’s website gives a detailed description of the risks Canyon Rock’s proposed asphalt plant may present to Forestville’s townsfolk and the delicate natural habitats that surround it. They include increased traffic from oil trucks driving in and asphalt trucks driving out, historical incidents of fires at asphalt plants and the volatile chemicals that off-gas during its production.
Canyon Rock’s website includes a page dedicated to the asphalt plant with as much detail on its plan to mitigate those risks with state-of-the-art containment, air filtration and fire suppression technology that wasn’t available in 1997; how bringing asphalt closer to West County’s roads may just reduce the carbon footprint of road repair; and how the plant will be fueled by liquified natural gas with carbon emissions far lower than the plant previously planned.
Bodean’s website similarly describes its own environmental bonafides, though it stands as a cautionary tale in two ways. Despite the best of intentions, whether through negligence or dumb luck, Bodean’s current predicament demonstrates that the impact of industry on the environment will never be zero, and the watchful eye of regulators is ever present. Secondly, they’ve shown what happens to a family-owned business when the consequences of that impact become too costly.
Trowbridge says the matter comes down to two questions: “Is Canyon Rock trustworthy enough, and is Forestville the ideal place?” Both can be answered by paraphrasing Jonathan Trappe’s earlier question: Who has more incentive to ensure whatever happens at Canyon Rock is safe, the man whose family lives around its footprint, or the type of multinational conglomerate he will be forced to sell to should he lose his competitive edge?
According to FMI, a consulting firm specializing in construction and infrastructure, acquisitions of construction materials companies grew by more than 16% between 2023 and 2024, which may be good news for investment bankers, but will only shrink the influence groups like RRCC can hope to wield in the face of industry giants. If an asphalt plant makes business sense to the Trappes, it will make sense to the corporation that buys them out, too.
Given the advances in technology in the intervening decades, the plant Canyon Rock wants to build today would ostensibly be cleaner and safer than the one the Trappes attempted to build in 1997, thanks in part to the efforts of the community action groups. But, as Bodean’s predicament demonstrates, if operating becomes too expensive, Forestville may lose another family owned business to corporate consolidation.
At least the devil they know is a neighbor who shares many of their interests and has a face they can negotiate with. The devil they don’t know has only fiduciary responsibilities and deep pockets to fend off regulators.
