He considers Baca too inexperienced with mining and unfairly niggling about this particular plan. Coudray has worked on reclamation plans for operations 10 times the size of this one, with less than a third of the information, and has seen those plans pass. The main conflict between the mine and the county concerns landslides. County Supervising Planner Greg Fuz thinks that the Colson mine poses a danger to the surrounding land, mostly because of a 1995 landslide off the quarry's east slope. Under Forest Service direction, the Antolinis had been putting their waste rock there.
All sides agree that the quarry is in a naturally landslide-prone mountain area.
Given that, and the enormous rainfall and earthquake aftershocks preceding the 1995 slide, Hank's geologists believe it's wrong to blame the Antolinis for the slide. It was just a large landslide. It pulled down a bunch of live oak, which the Antolinis will be replacing, and sent rubble down a slope where no one lives or works. They think those tests should adequately answer any concerns the county might have about the ground's stability. Coudray says that there is no such classification except in the minds of the county's planning staff.