Glacier Northwest Dupont Mine, Photo by Rick Dahms

• Glacier Northwest is a U.S. subsidiary of Taiheiyo Cement, a Japanese owned corporation that is one of the largest cement making companies in the world.

• Glacier Northwest currently dominates the regional aggregates market and also exports a significant amount of sand and gravel to out of state and foreign markets by both barge and rail.

• Under a variety of aliases, Glacier has operated the largest sand and gravel mines and cement batch plants on the West Coast.

• In doing so the company has been found guilty of many significant environmental violations.

• Two of the company managers were given criminal convictions and served jail sentences after being found guilty of deliberately violating the Federal Clean Water Act. After their convictions, these managers were given promotions within the company becoming President and Vice President of Glacier Northwest.

• In the past decade alone the company has paid over $600,000 in fines due to environmental violations.
  
  

  Mining Proposal

• Glacier Northwest has not actively mined the Maury Island property for over 30 years and there is currently no mining activity on the site

• Historic permitting allowed for the excavation of approximately 15,000 tons of aggregates per year at the Maury Island location - an appropriate volume given the unique environmental factors of the site.

• The company has proposed an expansion which if allowed, would be a 400 fold increase from permitted levels - and which based on extraction rates, would create the largest US mine of it's kind in the middle of Puget Sound.

• Glacier Northwest has proposed this mining operation on a property with soils contaminated by arsenic and lead at levels nearly 20 times higher than what is allowed under state and federal toxics control laws.

• This mega mine would use a mining method best compared to mountaintop removal and the proposed operations would change the elevation of the property, taking significant portions of the 300 foot marine bluffs down to sea level.

• Glacier has proposed mining to within 15 feet of the sole source aquifer which is the Island's only source of drinking water.
  
  

  Industrial Barging Facility

• To support this mega mine, Glacier Northwest proposes to build a massive industrial dock and barging facility in a sensitive Puget Sound nearshore area so ecologically significant that it was designated as one of the State's only aquatic reserve areas.

• Although Glacier's paid biologists report no risk of environmental harm, independent reviews of the proposed project show significant impacts to the nearshore area and the endangered species utilizing the site.