Over two hundred residents packed the San Joaquin River Center Thursday, downing tacos and beer while rallying against CEMEX’s proposed blast mine along the San Joaquin River that has pitted the livelihoods of roughly 60 union workers against federal warnings of environmental disaster.
As Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula promoted his bill to block the project, attendees gasped at display panels showing the planned riverbank blast crater. “Now I realize what they were talking about,” said one participant, pointing at the image of a depression deep enough to swallow three Security Bank skyscrapers stacked atop each other.
“We should not allow a practice that will threaten the water for our community, that will threaten this jewel we have in our backyard,” Arambula told the crowd, acknowledging the difficult position faced by both environmentalists and union workers who work at the existing CEMEX site.
If Arambula’s bill goes through, CEMEX’s blast mine proposal would be dead and its San Joaquin River operations would end, putting workers out of jobs until the company finds an alternative mining location – a process that could take a decade for approval.
“If this went all the way through the process, next September this plant will shut down,” said Wyatt Meadows, District Rep for Operating Engineers Local 3.
The dispute highlights CEMEX’s colorful history of mine location decisions and the consequences for its workforce. Unlike competitor Vulcan Materials, which relocated its operations to the Kings River and Madera County years ago, CEMEX gambled on a controversial strategy in Sanger to mine Jesse Morrow Mountain.
Since then, the company has doubled down on a century-old business model that built modern Fresno but has exhausted its welcome – along with the river’s resources.
Between 1900 and 2000, roughly 95% of all concrete, asphalt, home foundations, sidewalks and roads in Fresno were built with riverbed materials extracted from the San Joaquin River, according to Bee archives. By 2000, industry experts recognized the San Joaquin River was almost completely depleted of gravel material and expected companies to transition to the Kings River, which has approximately 2 billion tons of unmined gravel reserves – enough to last Fresno 500 years at its current usage rates.
In the 2000s, Vulcan Materials took the lead with this conservative approach. They secured approval for two mines – one in Madera, one in Fresno County near the Kings River. The American company now has hundreds of millions of tons of gravel permitted to supply Fresno for the next century.
CEMEX didn’t follow Vulcan’s path. Instead of pursuing readily available Kings River sites, the Mexican multinational company gambled in the mid-2000s on a riskier strategy.
The company first attempted to blast open Jesse Morrow Mountain near Sanger in the 2010s – a sacred Native American burial ground – seeking valuable gabbro minerals, according to company’s environmental review, which existed at higher elevations for high-grade materials. When county officials rejected that plan in 2012, CEMEX began experimental hard rock drilling tests in 2015 in an attempt to get even more river rock from their depleted San Joaquin site, leading to the current blast mine proposal.
Federal officials have warned of “notable risk” that the blast site could contaminate the river with lead, arsenic and other toxic chemicals. In the face of overwhelming community opposition, CEMEX’s proposal has now placed approximately 60 union workers in an impossible position – caught between their livelihoods and the potential for an environmental disaster for the city of Fresno.
“It’s been a great place to work”
“While 60 some-odd jobs doesn’t sound like a very high number…there are real people involved,” said Dillon Savory, executive director of the Central Labor Council. “They are folks making one hundred thousand dollars. There’s not a whole lot of hundred thousand dollar jobs in our community at all.”
Union representatives emphasized what’s on the line.
“They’re high wage jobs. These people retire with dignity, with pensions. It’s been a great place to work,” said Meadows, the union representative.
The non-unionized Vulcan Materials seems to have beat CEMEX in the race to secure Fresno’s gravel future. With Vulcan’s two massive, already approved mines, the most recent state geological survey identifies Fresno as now being one of the most over-permitted cities in the state of California for gravel – having a roughly 200% surplus.
John Shelton, former executive director of the San Joaquin River Conservancy, argued that stopping the blast mine would ultimately benefit both jobs overall and the environment. “Any place that has a nice river with full access will create better jobs than a place that destroys its rivers.”
Sharon Weaver, executive director of the River Parkway Trust, emphasized that opponents aren’t against sand and gravel extraction entirely, and that gravel can still be mined elsewhere.
“There are other places that we could get our rock that aren’t next to one of the major river systems in California,” she said. “We have been mining this river for over 100 years…when do we say enough – we’re done.”
Arambula acknowledged that the CEMEX proposal could still happen, suggesting the possibility of blasting slightly farther away from the river to minimize water impacts – though this approach would still delay the planned river parkway for decades and cause roughly $60 million in road damage on Friant Road that would be shouldered by taxpayers.
“We need to work to make sure that we are also protecting those jobs,” Arambula said, though he admitted this alternative proposal would only spare some union positions.
The battle moves to Sacramento Monday afternoon, where Arambula’s bill faces its first hearing with the natural resources committee. Building trades representatives are expected to show strong opposition to the legislation that could end a century-long legacy of mining along one of California’s most exploited waterways.
