State board rejects renewal of contested gravel leases at base of Casper Mountain

CHEYENNE —Prism Logistics suffered another blow Thursday to the company’s gravel mining plans near the base of Casper Mountain when the State Board of Land Commissioners voted not to renew six of the company’s leases in the area.

The denial comes after the Natrona County Commission voted two days earlier to advance a policy limiting heavy truck traffic on certain county roads, including Coates Road, the only way to access the lands Prism Logistics had leased.

Prism Logistics CEO Kyle True argued that county road blocks to the gravel operation violate the Wyoming Constitution. Besides battling to keep its leases, True and Prism are seeking a declaratory judgement in a lawsuit the company filed against Natrona County for using zoning regulations to halt its operations on state land. Natrona County Commissioner Dave North defended his elected board’s actions at Thursday’s meeting in Cheyenne.

The community’s reaction to the mining proposal, including the Casper Mountain Preservation Alliance’s petition to block the pit, shows there are just some pieces of land that are important enough to people to merit protection, North said.

“I’m not saying that we need to know every lease that goes on, on every piece of state property, but there are some that are more critical to us and that is a prime example of that,” North said. “The number of people we have that utilize this for recreational purposes — there’s a lot of them.”

North made his case to the Wyoming Board of Land Commissioners, which includes Gov. Mark Gordon, Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder, Secretary of State Chuck Gray, Treasurer Curt Meier and Auditor Kristi Racines. The board unanimously approved the leases in 2023 on a consent agenda without discussion, commissioners admitted in public meetings in 2024.

Racines made the motion to reject Prism’s request to renew six of the eight leases on the basis that Prism did not move forward in adequate time with licensing and permits from the Department of Environmental Quality and Office of State Lands and Investments. Gray and Degenfelder voted in favor of that motion.

Gordon, having already counted the votes necessary to deny the renewal, did not vote. The one dissenting voice, Meier, argued that the approximately 20,000 or so signatures on the petition to block the gravel operation were still a minority voice impeding what could be a great economic opportunity for the county and state.

“You figure maybe 20% or 25% of the people of Natrona County are making the decision, not only for Natrona County, but for the state,” Meier said. “Every time this board goes up against one, we know there’s two more coming. Converse County is going to pull the same stuff on wind. Niobrara County is going to pull the same stuff on wind.”

Turning away from these opportunities is going to keep poor communities poor, take away funding opportunities for public instruction and, all the while, pit neighbor against neighbor, Meier said.

“We have to think about Wyoming. We have to think that we have a culture here,” Meier said. “If we ignore who we are, we are destined to do the wrong thing again and again and again. I’d like to do the right thing together, but that’s not going to happen today.”

While red tape ultimately amounted to the final nail in the coffin for True’s hopes regarding his leases, Casper residents, mostly representatives of the Casper Mountain Preservation Alliance, flooded the public comment period of the meeting with a laundry list of other environmental, cultural and health-related concerns.

Some opponents of the gravel pit, such as nearby landowner and former Casper City Engineer Jason Knopp, argued that any repair or mitigation work Prism may do after the fact to provide Coates Road residents with fresh water would be ineffective. For example, Knopp’s ranch relies on a trench to direct water flow to his ranching operation that would be cut off by the gravel pit.

“There’s absolutely not a way you could actually mine this to not change the contours or the flow of that water that go from point A to point B,” Knopp said. “It’s not really actually possible.”

Gray also raised questions over the company’s violation of a regulation stipulating that an industrial disturbance should be 300 feet from any water. True said that violation was remediated and shouldn’t be considered in the decision to renew the leases.

“It’s our position that there was no live water. We went out there and there were dry creek beds,” True said. “We were not within 300 feet, when we dug those test holes, of a stream. We went back after those allegations had been made, and we looked and conditions had changed and there was live water.”

An Office of State Lands and Investments field inspection found Prism dug one of its 18 exploratory,13-foot-deep holes within 167 feet of the flowing stream.

“OSLI considers activities that are contrary to a standard stipulation the Board has
conditioned a lease upon to be a default of the lease terms,” a board document stated.

However, when Prism was served a 30-day notice to remedy the violation or have its lease revoked, it appeared to have already done so.

Later during public comment, Coates Road area resident Paulette Bray said she drives over the creek twice a day for work and it is perennially full.

“The water flows all the time. It doesn’t matter if it’s winter or summer or spring, it is always flowing,” Bray said.

North added that violations now don’t bode well for compliance with regulations in the future.

“If you violate your exploration permit right off the bat — which is the most simple — then you’ve got other problems,” North said.

Another concern was the loss of recreational opportunities in the area. Maria Katherman, a biology and botany instructor at Casper College, praised the Coates Road area for its unique biology and utility as a giant hands-on teaching tool within a short drive of campus.

“I’ve had so many students come up to me in the grocery store or in town or whatever and they say, ‘You know, I still go back to those state sections,’ or they say, ‘I decided to be a biology major, and it wasn’t because of your lectures. It was from those times in the state sections out there,'” Katherman said.

Additional concerns, including how the churning up of soil would encourage noxious weed growth; how higher-altitude industrial activity would impact Casper Mountain views and how outdoor tourism might be dampened all contributed to a clear message from Casper that a gravel pit at that specific location is not welcome. There were no public comments in favor of the operation.

When the idea was raised to pursue a recreational land use lease on the state parcels, Treasurer Meir compared many of the residents’ concerns to ‘not in my backyard talk.’

Now that leases for six of the eight parcels have not been renewed, Casper residents have the opportunity to find another use for the area. Auditor Racines implored members of the Casper Mountain Preservation Alliance to make their own proposal to the state before another interested party jumps at the chance.

“A gravel mine will not be the last thing proposed on this set of state lands,” Racines said.

Casper residents haven’t necessarily won anything and can’t call it a day, Rancines said, making a dusting-of-the-hands motion.

“I do think that the community of Casper, at least some of the folks in this room,  some of you very much understand state lands, have probably learned a lot through this process,” Rancines said. So residents should be aware, “anything could end up there.”

Because only six of the eight leases originally granted to Prism Logistics were approved in June 2023 — with the remaining two granted in October 2023 — there are still some areas near Coates Road that Prism has not yet lost.

Parties on both sides of the Casper gravel fight are awaiting rulings in two separate cases. Even if the judge comes back with a decision affirming the Natrona County commissioners’ actions, True has indicated he will likely appeal the decision to the Wyoming Supreme Court.