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Sunny Valley mine approved — again Monday Dec 26, 2016 at 10:46 AM Dec 26, 2016 at 10:53 AM Shaun Hall Grants Pass Daily Courier Six years and some 7,000 pages of documents later, Andreas Blech has again won Josephine County's conditional blessing to dig for gravel on his property east of Interstate 5 in Sunny Valley. Blech, president of Sunny Valley Sand and Gravel, appeared before the county Board of Commissioners last week at the Basker Auditorium, telling them he used 24 consultants and dealt with 27 agencies to put together an application that commissioners approved once before. Because that decision was appealed by upset residents, Blech revised his proposal, which was approved unanimously and without comment by commissioners on Wednesday. Commissioners agreed to rezone Blech's 212 acres of property and allow mining on 112 acres of it. Blech and a handful of citizens spoke. "There seems to be some people out there that have a fear of creating jobs or harvesting natural resources or maybe even they want to see the county wasting more time and money and bringing up issues that don't exist or that already have been considered," Blech said during a final public hearing on the matter. Residents Tony Minn and Joe Boyer spoke against the mine, with Minn saying one person has threatened violence and Boyer saying water is scarce and truck traffic disruptive. Citizen Judy Ahern suggested that Blech reduce the number of truck trips. "If both sides could give and take," she said. "We all live in this community and we should love and share." Reach reporter Shaun Hall at 541-474-3722 or [email protected].