Supervisors OK Construction Recycling Plant

Paul Viborg, a North County, Calif., businessman, has received county permission to continue running his operation as a concrete and asphalt recycling plant.

On a unanimous vote, the Board of Supervisors gave Viborg a permit to continue his construction recycling business near Paso Robles, Calif.

The site consists of 17 acres, with recycling taking almost half the land. The operation includes on-site sorting and stockpiling of sand, gravel, concrete and asphalt; a portable rock and recycling crusher; and trucking scales.

Viborg’s business was once mostly a mining operation, but it gradually morphed into recycling. That triggered the need for new permits and a new management plan for the mine, including a scheme for what will happen to it when he closes it. Viborg plans to provide that.

Supervisors gave him other restrictions, such as 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. as his operating hours during the week and a noon close time on Saturday.

The Planning Commission approved the permits in November. North County Watch and Pacific Coastkeeper, environmental watchdog groups, appealed the decision to the Board of Supervisors. Tuesday’s action was a denial of that appeal.

Michael Jencks, attorney for the watchdog groups, appealed on 13 issues, the most contentious of which was the toxic effect of asphalt.

The state, however, told the Planning and Building Department that crushed asphalt and concrete are classified as nonhazardous waste.

Recycling byproducts also adversely affect air quality, Jencks said, and could affect climate change.

However, the county said the effect on greenhouse gases is "relatively very small and considered insignificant."

In fact, the county said, recycling these materials rather than causing them to be manufactured anew is helping.

"The project is a recycling facility that reduces the overall need for regional energy production that would otherwise be used to produce these products … from their base constituents," planners wrote in a report to the Board of Supervisors.

Viborg said the operation creates less need to import construction materials from outside the area, which is costlier and more harmful to the environment. San Luis Obispo Tribune