COQUILLE — Two conditions will be added and two changed regarding chromite mining, Coos County commissioners decided at a public hearing on Tuesday. The discussion will continue on Thursday afternoon when commissioners are expected to make a final decision.

After reviewing an appeal of a Planning Commission decision, commissioners opted to address road maintenance and added to 11 conditions already attached to the approval of a chromite mining operation.

It was a full house in the courtroom on Tuesday, with members of the audience filling the room and others standing outside the door. Fifty to 60 people attended the nearly two-hour public hearing, many wearing T-shirts bearing anti-Oregon Resources slogans.

Since commissioners decided not to allow any further public testimony, the crowd remained silent. Only members of the Planning Commission were allowed to intervene. Oregon Resources President Cheryl Wilson remained expressionless and the row of people in the “No ORC” T-shirts sat with arms folded, including the Bandon couple, David and Sharon Comden, who filed an appeal challenging the Planning Commission’s approval of a conditional use permit for Oregon Resources.

The permit will allow the Portland company to conduct business on 2,000 acres of mixed-use forest lands between Charleston and Bandon.

Commissioner Kevin Stufflebean advised Commissioner Nikki Whitty and Chairman John Griffith that he would like Beaver Hill Road, the main hauling route for the mining trucks, widened, and not just maintained by Oregon Resources Corporation.

“We’ve got a major corporation, making a major investment in the county, with some major impacts to the community,” Stufflebean said. “We need to address it today.”

Stufflebean, the interim roadmaster, said he not only wanted 6 miles of Beaver Hill Road widened, but also an agreement for sharing the cost of maintaining roads near the proposed Bunker Hill plant: Mullen Road, Howard Avenue and Center Street.

But, Whitty and Griffith said they thought Oregon Resources should be responsible only for upkeep of wear and tear caused during operation of their five mining sites near Seven Devils Road in Bandon. County Counsel Jacqueline Haggerty was asked to compose two options for road maintenance for commissioners to review Thursday at 3 p.m. at a second hearing in the commissioners' courtroom in the Coos County Courthouse, 250 N. Baxter St., in Coquille.

Commissioners also decided to add a condition making Oregon Resources financially responsible for road signs, to clarify two other conditions concerning cleanup of mud and dust on roads, and to provide a more inclusive list of agencies that would oversee the project.

Haggerty advised commissioners that they do have options.

“You do have the option of limiting the applicant for a certain period of time and then requiring a new permit,”Haggerty said. “You could have a review, a renewal, however you want to structure that.”

After the hearing, residents who live near the proposed mining sites said they didn’t feel the commissioners were looking at the most important problems.

“We’re not worried about the mud on the truck tires,” Anna Green said, admitting that she had walked out of the meeting part way through.

“I think it all comes down to money,” she said. “People who work all their lives to live there don’t expect someone to put a strip mining facility in their back yards.”

“Nobody on the commission is from Bandon,” Michele Buckley said. “They don’t care about the community.”

However, one of the appellants was less critical about the board.

“They’re trying to do the best they can,” said Comden, who lives near one of the proposed sites. “But, they don’t care about it the way we do.”

She said, besides the constant activity and noise they’ll have to deal with, she and her husband, David, worry about the presence of toxic metals and water depletion.

“Our water table is so shallow, no matter what they do they’ll hit water,” Comden said. “The commissioners don’t understand, there are loop holes as big as a truck.

“Basically, it forces us to consider the LUBA appeal,” she added.