Health impact such a mining project
Harper Companies, which successfully rezoned some 400 acres for mining just north of the sandbar, wanted the Tooele County Planning Commission to rezone sections of the bar itself.
During Wednesday night's meeting Joseph Rust, an agent with Harper Companies Incorporated told the audience, "There will be absolutely no visual disturbance whatsoever from the bar to the south. There will be nothing that the people..the people of stockton would not be able to see a single thing change."
But residents and local officials are concerned about the health impact such a mining project would produce. Just on the other side of the bar is the old Bauer Tailings site that is highly contaminated by heavy metals like arsenic and lead.
Stockton's Mayor Mark Whitney told ABC 4 News, "Without the bar there, it would pick up all the contamination that the state and federal government have not cleaned up yet."
Harper Companies argues that there are no contaminants in the area of the bar they want to mine.
"It's absolutely against the Harper's best interest to even touch anything that's bad," explained Rust. "They don't want to come close to that for the simple reason that if they take any material that's contaminated and put it in any other plance then they are liable for contaminating that other place."
Stockton council member and President of Save the Bar Committee, Kendall Thomas, says it's just too much. Thomas says they've been fighting Harper's mining plans since 2009, they compromised in 2001 and now, he says, Rulon Harper is asking for more.