Canadian folk singer Joni Mitchell, whose first hit 36 years ago was about the perils of paving paradise, is trying to prevent a London miner from muscling in on her piece of it.

Pan Pacific Aggregates Plc plans to build a $100 million industrial-rock mine on British Columbia's Sunshine Coast, where mild temperatures and a rugged shoreline attract vacationers and retirees from around the world.

The quarry would take an "incredibly beautiful area of wildlife and turn it into an industrial moonscape," Mitchell said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. The singer gained fame in 1970 for "Big Yellow Taxi," whose lyrics railed against developers who "paved paradise and put up a parking lot."

Mitchell, 62, is one of more than 4,000 people who signed petitions circulated by two groups opposing the mine. One of them, Save Our Sunshine Coast, led an armada of 70 yachts and sailboats along the coast in July to protest Pan Pacific's plan.

The retirees and second-home owners are facing off against workers who say the region needs the jobs the mine would bring. As the economy shifts toward tourism and retirement services, it's generating jobs that pay less than loggers and mill workers have made.

Pan Pacific said it plans to hire at least 100 local workers to help export 6 million metric tons of crushed rock a year, mostly to California. First it must submit a report on the mine's environmental impact to the provincial government next year, obtain a zoning change and receive a mining permit.

`We Need the Jobs'

"I'm singing the mine's praises," said Russ Clarke, 73, a retired forestry-road builder who lives in Sechelt, a town of 10,000 people about nine miles (14 kilometers) south of the proposed rock mine. "We need the jobs. This town used to have 300 loggers. Now there's only 25."

British Columbia annually consumes about 60 million tons of the materials Pan Pacific plans to mine -- crushed limestone, used in making cement, and dolomite, used in ceramics and fertilizer. The province's economy grew 3.5 percent last year, compared with 2.9 percent for the rest of Canada, led by a construction boom for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.

Pan Pacific, whose shares trade on London's Alternative Investment Market for smaller stocks, said the mine is the first of several it may build near the Sunshine Coast on the forested slopes of the Caren mountain range.

Coexisting With Tourists

"We see no reason why our development cannot coexist with tourism and other land uses," said Don Nicholson, 67, Pan Pacific's chairman.

The company has spent about C$25 million ($23 million) to develop industrial-rock mines on the Sunshine Coast, said Cal Mark, project manager. That includes acquiring mineral rights beneath much of the Sechelt Peninsula, about 35 miles northwest of Vancouver, purchasing mining permits and building access roads. Exploration in the area began in 1969.

Pan Pacific's first mine on the Sunshine Coast would disturb about 215 hectares (531 acres). It also would cut a 6.6- mile swath through coastal forests for a rock conveyor system to Wood Bay, where Pan Pacific plans to build a port.

"Wood Bay is the most lightly populated area on the Sunshine Coast," said Mark, 58. "Bringing the conveyor and offloading port to Wood Bay should have the least impact."

Million-Dollar Homes

That's little consolation to people who own seafront homes valued at C$1 million to C$4 million that sit within sight of the planned port, said Garry Nohr, an elected representative of the municipality, the Sunshine Coast Regional District. The Sunshine Coast's population jumped 3.2 percent last year to 28,557, the biggest increase in the province.

"Pan Pacific sees the area as rural," said Nohr. "People who live here see it as residential, within a rural setting."

That's what lured Gail Jarislowsky, who has visited the area since childhood. The wife of fund manager Stephen Jarislowsky, of Jarislowsky Fraser Ltd. in Montreal, has seen killer whales and porpoises frolicking in the waves near her family's seaside cottage on Halfmoon Bay. She said she fears those sightings would become even rarer amid increased traffic by ocean freighters hauling away the rock.

"We're not against development, but it should be measured and well reasoned," said Jarislowsky, 67, a member of the Halfmoon Bay Citizens Association, a taxpayers group. "This area is already under environmental pressure." The region has a gravel mine operated by Vancouver's Construction Aggregates Ltd., a unit of Heidelberg, Germany-based HeidelbergCement AG.

Executives of Pan Pacific, who have held public meetings to build support for the project, say they will do everything possible to limit environmental damage. If the company passes all regulatory hurdles, mining may begin in late 2008.

That could diminish the Sunshine Coast's allure for Mitchell, who has owned property in the area since the late 1960s and now has about 80 acres. The singer, who has won five Grammys, said she wrote most of her songs at her oceanside cottage.

"This has been a place to restore my soul," she said. "It's like my Walden Pond."