A standing-room-only crowd gathered at City Hall in South Sioux City for Monday’s City Council meeting, where concerns for a potential aggregate storage facility dominated discussion.
On a 7-1 vote, the City Council gave its blessing to a conditional use permit requested by landowners Martin and Janice Hohenstein that will allow for a rail spur to be built to allow Knife River to build a facility that would store aggregate for road construction projects it is working on in this part of the state.
In a public hearing that preceded the vote, Mr. Hohenstein told the Council that the land in question has been in his family for more than 65 years and he had been approached by officials from Knife River after a similar proposal along Highway 110 west of South Sioux City had been rejected by the Dakota County Board of Commissioners — of which Hohenstein is chairman — earlier this year.
A number of concessions were made by Knife River officials after meeting with residents in the Rotund subdivision, but there was still an abundance of objections that were expressed during the 2 1/2-hour long meeting.
In the end, the Council voted to approve the Hoheinstein conditional use permit request, with Councilman Mahamud Osman casting the lone dissenting vote.
Complete coverage in this week’s Dakota County Star.
