Three state board members delivered Colorado Springs a major blow Thursday, denying a permit linked to immediate reclamation of the scar on the mountain. The decision means:

All this, and more, because the Colorado Mined Land Reclamation Board voted 3-2 against a typical and reasonable mining application by Transit Mix.

The company wanted to move menacing Pikeview Quarry operations it acquired, which burden nearly 700,000 people in the metro area, to a hidden location. The proposed replacement quarry could be seen by one residence and no passersby on any major roads. We repeat: Humans in one residence could see the proposed new mine.

“Hitch Rack Ranch is the single best location for a new quarry in El Paso County,” said City Councilmember Merv Bennett.

Council President Pro Tem Jill Gaebler, a majority of her colleagues, and half a dozen of El Paso County’s state legislators also lauded the proposal.

Never mind what Colorado’s second largest city needs. Reclamation board members John Singletary, Jill Van Noord and Bob Randall voted against the plan. The decision has no clear nexus to the state’s traditional practices.

Karin Utterback-Normann and Forrest Luke voted to approve the application. Lauren Duncan and Tom Brubaker recused themselves.

The Gazette Editorial Board researched the Hitch Rack proposal intermittently for almost two years. We met with representatives of both sides. We reviewed flat maps and three-dimensional models. We visited Hitch Rack Ranch, two quarries, and the aggregate facilities in urban neighborhoods that would vanish under the proposal.

Everything about this plan was a win-win for hundreds of thousands of residents, public health, and the environment. More than 1,500 homes sit within a mile of the notorious scar, compared with 13 within a mile of the proposed alternative at Hitch Rack.

At worst, the Hitch Rack plan was a minor imposition on a handful of wealthy rural residents who already built homes near an active quarry with trucks that come and go all day. The plan involved cleaning up an ugly operation that burdens the many, in favor of a more appropriate, less visible mine that would barely bother a few.

Hitch Rack Ranch owner Cindi Allmendinger wanted a quarry, in part, because the state’s share of royalties would fund public schools. She’s a public school teacher. Neighbors who opposed her plan passed on opportunities to buy the land and control it. By getting their way with a licensing board, they will control another person’s property without having to buy or maintain it. Don’t tell Allmendinger she has property rights.

The economic, cultural, and environmental costs of this suspicious decision are incalculable. It is a sad day for Colorado Springs, in which the luxury concerns of a few defy benefits proposed for the masses – in addition to one family’s property rights.