A mining company that operates a rock quarry in Grey Cloud Island Township wants a part of its land to be annexed into neighboring Cottage Grove.
Holcim MWR Inc., formerly Aggregate Industries, filed an annexation petition on Thursday to have 120 acres annexed to Cottage Grove; the corporate owns about 600 acres within the township. A public hearing on the request shall be 7 p.m. April 19 at Cottage Grove City Hall.
The annexation petition lists several reasons for the request, including concerns that “the township form of presidency shouldn’t be adequate to guard the general public health, safety and welfare of the community surrounding this property due to a shortage of staff and resources.”
The annexation “could be in the perfect interests of the topic property because the prevailing levels of governmental services, including water, sewer, fire protection, law enforcement, street repair and land use approvals are inadequate for the property,” the petition states. “Moreover, given physical development, planning, intended land use and the economic nature of the property, Cottage Grove is way more able to providing the services required by the property inside an affordable time.”
Township expected it
The news of the annexation petition didn’t surprise officials within the township, which has a population of about 300 people.
“We’ve been expecting this for a while,” said Dick Polta, township supervisor. “It’s not the primary annexation that has taken place, and we figure it won’t be the last.”
In 2005, an administrative law judge signed off on the annexation of 300 acres of township land west of Washington County Road 75 into the town of St. Paul Park for a proposed retail and business development that was never built, Polta said. The southern a part of Grey Cloud Island was annexed to Cottage Grove within the early Eighties.
Polta said he wouldn’t be in favor of Holcim’s annexation request, which he believes is just “step one in annexing the rest of the property into Cottage Grove in the longer term.”
“For my part, the one reason they’re requesting an annexation is because they need to increase their mining footprint going east of County Road 75, and Grey Cloud Island Township is against that,” he said. “They’re going to a special community within the hopes of getting permission to extend their mining footprint. They haven’t officially asked to do this, but we all know that request is coming. They’re running out of fabric to mine in the world that has been approved for mining.”
Holcim officials didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
Cottage Grove relationship
The township gets EMS services from Cottage Grove; police services from Washington County Sheriff’s Office and fire protection from St. Paul Park, Polta said.
Cottage Grove City Administrator Jennifer Levitt said the town has experience working with Holcim, which operates a big aggregate mining facility in the town. “We have already got the skilled and technical staff readily available, and we now have those resources and services to supply them,” she said.
The township received nearly $30,000 last 12 months from Holcim through its “gravel tax,” together with about $3,900 in property tax, in keeping with Washington County property tax records.
Polta questioned whether Cottage Grove would even need to annex the land.
“What’s on this for the town of Cottage Grove?” he said. “They’re not gaining loads of tax revenue. What they’re gaining is loads of problems by acquiring a rock quarry. They don’t get any complaints concerning the sand and gravel pit. There’s no drilling, no blasting, no shaking of the bottom, no trucking. This can be a very different operation.”