Black Oak Clays Range Future Still Undecided

Oskaloosa, Iowa – The Mahaska County Board of Supervisors met in regular session on Monday morning, with a public hearing in regards to Black Oak Clays, once again drawing a substantial crowd.

There were dozens of people in the room, while nearly 20 people spoke about why they support the range, or how the range has impacted their quality of life.

The debate started when a resident near the range raised concerns to the Mahaska County Attorney, and it was discovered that some buildings on the grounds may have been built without permits.

Oskaloosa Planning and Zoning Committee member Wyndell Campbell shared how the process for planning and zoning and building approval happens within the City of Oskaloosa.

Oskaloosa has a zoning ordinance, while Mahaska County does not. Anyone seeking to build within the rural portions of the county have to obtain the proper permits from the county.

Oskaloosa News sat down with Mahaska County Supervisors Board Chairman Mark Groenendyk after Monday’s meeting to find out more about where the board was in this process.

“We’re just following our counsel’s advice, doing public hearings, taking in the public’s thoughts, getting information. It’s in the zoning section of the code the we understand it. So this is not what we’d normally would do and so, this is just trying to make sure we do it right. Making sure we’ve talked to other counties, insurance companies. I spoke with the DNR trying to get as much information as possible to make sure it’s done right,” said Groenendyk.

“If I understand the code right, we are, we have to approve by code the improvements,” said Groenendyk. “Normally, even when we’re doing our own improvements, there’s engineers, there’s certified people that sign off onto it saying this is what’s safely built, it’s safe for the public, it meets the standards. Things like that. I think that’s probably the direction I’m leaning for probably. Going to have more conversations with Andrew [Ritland – County Attorney] is really, who has the authority to sign off on something like this, to tell us it’s safe, so if something does happen, the county, the taxpayers are not liable because we missed something we should have caught it. It really wasn’t safe and now the taxpayers are on the hook for dollar amounts. That’s the avenue’s I’m looking at it for, is really, what’s the county’s responsibility, who has the authority to sign off and tell us it’s safe so we can move forward.”

As presented during the meetings, the conversations aren’t surrounding the noise, but instead the structures that were built to improve the target clay facility.

Also discussed at the meeting was a review and approval of the County’s five-year road plan.

Intrum Mahaska County Engineer Jeremiah Selby, who is the full-time engineer for Monroe County, was on hand to go over the plan with the Supervisors on Monday.

“By code, we’re required to do a five-year plan, and submit it to the state” Groenendyk explained. “We’ve laid out, as of today, we believe our most critical need is for roads and the traffic and what our five-year plan would look like for the monies we have today or are receiving in the next five years.”

“I think they estimated it to be around seven million dollars for the next fiscal year,” Groenendyk explained. “This summer on the current fiscal year, we’re going to do the west half of G-71. We just approved that plan two weeks ago. It’s 4.5 or 4.6 million dollars. So we’ll hopefully start on that here briefly, shortly, this spring. We’re planning to do next for fiscal year ’20, we’ve got a bridge over Cedar Creek on 335th Street. We’ve got a second bridge on Elm Creek on 110th Street. Each bridge is estimated to cost around $700,000.”

“You heard Jeremiah say, we receive $420,000 in bridge money every year,” Groenendyk explained. “We’d like to do the Taintor Road, going south of Taintor to T-38.”