Washington Quarry Faces Opposition • Vulcan Quarry to Open in South Carolina • Colorado Quarry Deal Being Considered • Wisconsin Quarry Gets Green Light
Washington Quarry Faces Opposition
The Raging River Quarry in Snoqualmie, Wash., was ordered to stop operations due to noise complaints. The quarry, located on 50 acres, but currently operating only on 25 acres west of Preston-Fall City Road, has been a concern for members of the Raging River Conservation Group since it formed last fall.
However, in the past two months, staff at the King County Department of Permitting and Environmental Review (DPER) received noise complaints from the more than 50 homes within a quarter-mile of the active site. “It’s just in the last month that they’ve produced enough product to have trucks come in,” Fred White, a DPER inspector overseeing the quarry site told the Snoqualmie Valley Record. DPER project manager Randy Sanden noted the quarry hasn’t had any blasts that surpassed its allowed thresholds.
The stop order will be “provisionally lifted” periodically, White said, “to allow them to do limited sampling,” but not for regular operations.
Vulcan Quarry to Open in South Carolina
Vulcan Materials Co. recently submitted its final permit application to begin construction on a quarry project that will be located on Stutman Road in Bateburg-Leesville, S.C.
Construction is expected to begin in 2017 and operations in 2018.
The company says they tailored their plans to address some concerns from the community. Work to increase setbacks is also being done at the state level. State Sen. Katrina Shealy, state Sen. Shane Massey and state Rep. Ralph Kennedy, all of whom represent Lexington County, have proposed bills requiring a setback of one half-mile.
The Department of Health and Environmental Control is also going to hold a public meeting with the community about the project in the coming weeks, but a specific day has not been scheduled yet, according to WLTX.com.
Colorado Quarry Deal Being Considered
The Pikeview Quarry site in the mountains west of Colorado Springs, Colo., will one day be re-vegetated and handed over for public use if a plan for a new quarry is approved in the next year, according to The Gazette.
A proposed quarry between Colorado Springs and Penrose, Colo., off Hitch Rack Ranch Road, could lead to the closure of the Pikeview Quarry in as little as five years, said Deborah Hileman, a spokeswoman for Transit Mix Concrete Co. The project depends on a permitting process that would require the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety and El Paso County to sign off on a change in land use on the almost 400 acres west of Highway 115 north of Penrose.
Pikeview Quarry, which was built in 1903, fell under scrutiny in 2008 and 2009 when a pair of rockslides sent an estimated 3 million tons of rock crashing down the quarry walls. The facility closed while geologists and engineers analyzed the mine and Transmit Mix submitted a plan for safely resuming its work. The quarry reopened in May 2013.
Wisconsin Quarry Gets Green Light
Milestone Materials has permission from Buffalo County Board of Adjustment for a limestone-mining project in rural Mondovi, according to the Winona Daily News.
The board voted 3-0 to give Milestone Materials a conditional-use permit to extract limestone from a new Buck Ridge Quarry site off Highway 37 in the Town of Mondovi. Milestone Materials, a division of Mathy Construction Co., has been in the aggregate industry since the early 1960s. The company produces top-quality aggregates using the latest technologies to meet the needs of its customers in Wisconsin, Minnesota and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
A plan calls for expanding an existing quarry purchased by the company in 2004 to 120 acres of adjoining land owned by Segerstrom & Sons of Mondovi.
The original quarry was issued a conditional-use zoning permit in 1991, but rock quarries dated back to the 1930s and 1940s, zoning officials were told. Under a 20-year lease agreement with Segerstrom & Sons, Milestone Materials intends to mine limestone from an estimated 60 acres of land located within an industrial sand mining site. Segerstrom has conditional-use zoning permits for sand mining projects on 367 acres of land.