Cemex sues Santa Clarita

Building material company takes legal action against city, claims breach of contract, civil right violations

In response to city plans to annex the site of a controversial sand-and-gravel mine site in Soledad Canyon on the city’s eastern border, Cemex filed a lawsuit against the city of Santa Clarita claiming breach of contract, civil rights violations, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing and declaratory relief.

The lawsuit, which was filed last month in Los Angeles County Superior Court but made public as part of the City Council’s closed session agenda released Thursday, said the city has made “numerous and deliberate violations of a settlement agreement between Cemex and the city that resolved prior litigation brought

by Cemex several years ago challenging the city’s improper efforts in 2005 to annex Cemex’s mining site, in much the same way as the city seeks now in 2017 to improperly annex that same Cemex mining site, along with other improper actions.”

City spokeswoman Carrie Lujan said the city did not have a comment on the lawsuit.

“We don’t comment on pending litigation,” she said.

The lawsuit said the city tried to annex the site in order to manage it and shut down the mining project.

“Now, twelve years after signing the settlement agreement, the city and its affiliates are acting in total disregard of the settlement agreement terms, and have breached the agreement in multiple ways,” the lawsuit said. “The city has once again proposed to annex the Soledad Canyon Project site, once again without the environmental review and notices to Cemex that are required under the settlement agreement and state law.”

The lawsuit noted the city proposed annexing 4.21 square miles—2,694.4 acres—which would include nearly all of the mine site, during a Nov. 14 City Council meeting. The lawsuit said the city provided a 21-day public comment period, but did not notify Cemex or the Bureau of Land Management.

On Dec. 5, the day the public comment period closed, the city’s planning commission approved a recommendation that the City Council adopt a resolution favoring annexation, the lawsuit said.

“For the 2005 Annexation Project, the city effectively admitted that it deliberately failed to mention or discuss the Soledad Canyon Project or the fact that the United States owned the mineral estate in and around the Soledad Canyon Project Site,” the lawsuit said. “The city also admitted, in multiple public statements, that the true purpose of the annexation was to interfere with and stop the Soledad Canyon Project. With the 2017 Annexation Project, the city has done, and is doing, precisely the same things for the same reason.”

The lawsuit stated the city had not filed an environmental impact report for the annexation, and said it had a legal and contractual obligation to do so.

The lawsuit referred to a separate Sacramento-area lawsuit that resulted in a jury awarding more than $100 million in damages to two surface mining companies.

“This latest salvo in the city’s relentless campaign against the Soledad Canyon Project, with the city’s varying forms of political influence, bad-faith litigation tactics, and public relations smear campaigns, strikes a chord remarkably similar to the facts in a recent judicial ruling involving unlawful actions taken by public officials and project opponents to block the operations of two surface mining companies,” the Cemex lawsuit said. “The city’s illegal actions will fare no better in this case.”

Cemex said it has two federal contracts to mine 56.1 million tons of sand and gravel from a 500-acre site in Soledad Canyon, about two miles outside city limits.

Santa Clarita City Council members approved a pair of $20,000 lobbying contracts last fall to support their effort to keep the Cemex sand-and-gravel mine away from Soledad Canyon, but said a decision by the BLM to cancel mineral rights contracts could come in weeks or years. Cemex has filed an appeal to the decision.

City officials had said the average time for a decision is two to two-and-a-half years. September 2017 was about the two-year mark.