EVERETT — Snohomish County asked a judge this week to find OMA Construction in violation of county code for continuing to work at its mining aggregate yard next to Fairmount Elementary, despite an emergency stop-work order.
For almost a year, teachers and students reported health concerns they attributed to dust from the site. Staff found themselves changing the school’s HVAC system filters more often. Students reported bloody noses and coughing fits.
Given these concerns, the county issued an emergency order on Feb. 21, telling OMA Construction that “all use and operations on the site are to be discontinued immediately.”
But in the weeks that followed, staff from the county and Mukilteo School District submitted at least 10 reports to county Planning and Development Services concerning OMA Construction’s suspected violations of the order. Mountain Loop Mine employees have operated the yard without necessary permits since April 2023.
All of the complaints sent to the county include photos or videos of company dump trucks coming and going from the aggregate yard with dirt or gravel.
On Tuesday, Snohomish County filed a request for an injunction, with the next hearing in the case scheduled for April 11 in front of Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Millie Judge.
In an email earlier this month, OMA Construction Vice President Brandon Akers said the company hasn’t operated at the site since the county issued the stop-work order. A representative of OMA Construction said they intended to only use the yard for parking dump trucks and storing equipment, though the county clarified “daily staging and dispatch of vehicles” was not allowed under the emergency order, according to a request for a temporary restraining order filed by Snohomish County Planning Director Mike McCrary.
On March 20, Snohomish County amended the emergency order, further specifying that “idling, unloading, loading, driving/passby and general operation of dump trucks, loaders and other heavy construction equipment” is prohibited at the yard.
OMA Construction did not respond to requests for comment this week.
All was quiet at the yard just outside Everett city limits Wednesday, as school bus drivers passed by on Beverly Park Road to drop students off at Fairmount.
As light rain fell, tall piles of gravel, rock and sand sat untouched behind a now-closed gate. For almost 10 months, the yard at 2615 Center Road was a distracting scene for students and staff at Fairmount, who constantly heard Mountain Loop Mine employees loading and unloading materials with dump trucks at the site.
Last week, both the state Department of Health and attorney general’s office sent letters to Brian Farrell, project manager for county Planning and Development Services. The health department recommended the project “operate elsewhere” and “not adjacent to a property with a school, childcare center or other sensitive population.”
Operations at the Everett Aggregate Yard also raise environmental justice concerns, wrote Alyssa Shaw, the author of the health department’s letter.
Citing the Washington Environmental Health Disparities Map, Shaw wrote that “communities surrounding this project site already experience disproportionate negative environmental and health impacts.”
The project site sits well within earshot of planes landing and taking off at Paine Field, and it’s along a common route for Boeing commuters. It’s ranked nine on a scale of one to 10 for environmental health disparities, “with 10 indicating the highest level of negative environmental health impacts,” the letter stated.
State officials highlighted the unusual nature of their involvement in the attorney general’s letter, writing: “We do not commonly submit comments on permit applications, but the Applicant’s conduct at this site in the last year is also uncommon.”
The Office of the Attorney General also noted environmental justice as a significant issue in this case.
Almost half of the students at Fairmount, and a quarter of the students at Pathfinder Kindergarten Center on the same property, are English language learners. This population is “particularly sensitive to noise increases,” the attorney general’s letter noted.
Fairmount Elementary’s portable classrooms are the closest to the aggregate yard — about 50 feet away. And one of the classrooms is for multilingual learners.
“They’re refugees coming from war-torn countries, and they’re hearing the sounds back there,” teacher Melissa Reed told The Daily Herald on a previous visit to the school. “It scares them.”
At full operation, the site generated between 59 and 90 decibels of sound.
Before the county issued the emergency order, Akers said the company had plans to build a noise wall along the site’s north boundary, claiming it would dampen noise by 40 decibels. Still, Akers contended operations weren’t emitting dust or exceeding county noise standards.
“By allowing the current noise levels without the proper mitigation,” the attorney general’s letter read, “it would exacerbate the inequality and injustice that the County should be aiming to fix.”
Ta’Leah Van Sistine: 425-339-3460; taleah.vansistine@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @TaLeahRoseV.
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