Brighton Township Residents Unite Against Plan to Reopen Gravel Pit

The Brighton Township Board of Trustees meeting was standing room only Monday night, as resident after resident spoke against the proposal to reopen the gravel pit on Jacoby Road, west of Kensington Road.

The topic, although not on the agenda Monday night, has been a cause of concern for residents for several weeks.

The Brighton Township Planning Commission voted in July to recommend approval to the Township Board to award extraction and fill permits to Clearwater Development LLC. The issue has not yet gone before the board and no date has been scheduled for the topic to appear on an agenda.

The township had a joint planned development agreement with the former property owner Sunset Gravel, to develop part of the land into a park, but was never done. Sunset sold the property earlier this year.

Todd Peters said he was unhappy that Sunset broke its commitment with the community and that the township did nothing to stop the company.

"Clearwater Development, a company just incorporated this year and has never developed anything, submitted a plan to mine and fill the property for 20 years," Peters said. "That is a generation and an abomination to our community."

Jo Ellen Pisarczyk said her subdivision - which shares a common area 300 feet from access to the site - was absolutely blindsided by the Planning Commission's decision to support Clearwater's permit requests. She was also upset that not a single homeowner was notified of the meeting.

Township resident Melissa Eck said there couldn't be a worse possible place to put a gravel pit in Livingston County. As a water resource specialist, she's studied both hydrology and hydro-geology. After hearing about the gravel pit from a neighbor on Monday, Eck pulled up topographical maps to bring to the Township Board meeting.

"Water follows the topography, so that water is going to go down and to the south," she said. "And what's directly south on a normal map? Four major parks: Brighton Recreation Area, Huron Metropark, Island Lake Recreation Area and Kensington MetroPark. It also has the Huron River. And these are connected lakes - it goes across to Milford, down to Ann Arbor, it's the whole Huron River Watershed."

Eck said the township makes more off the nearby parks than it would on this mining and filling deal with Clearwater.

"It doesn't make sense environmentally or economically to destroy the most profitable area," she said. "What draws people from Wayne and other counties on the weekends? You see Kensington packed, Island Lake packed - it's a big money maker for us. Especially in the summer, but even in the winter."

Eck said there's a lot of questions that still need to be asked and she thinks both the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S. Fisheries and Wildlife need to be involved in the decision making process.

Brighton Patch will continue to follow this story as it develops.