|
This news story originally provided by
The
Charleston Gazette
By Ken Ward Jr.
Staff writer
FAULKNER — Pat Gallagher pointed at a spot on the topographic
map. Chairman Tom Michael and other members of the state Surface
Mine Board gathered around to see.
Then, Gallagher wheeled his arm across the old logging road at a
mountain chocked full of Greenbrier Limestone.
The J.F. Allen Co. hopes to turn this Randolph County hillside
into a huge limestone quarry. Michael and his fellow board members
came for a guided tour.
“We’re right on the edge of the permit area as we stand here
now,” Gallagher, a J.F. Allen consultant, told the group. “It just
wraps around the ridge.”
The company wants to blast apart and haul away the top 400 feet
or so of the ridge.
Over the next 60 years, the company will dig nearly 70 million
tons of limestone.
Local residents oppose the Pond Lick Mountain Quarry proposal.
They fear it will damage their water supplies and harm the area’s
growing tourism business.
In early January, DEP Secretary Stephanie Timmermeyer approved
the permit, despite critical comments from one of her agency’s own
inspectors.
Now, the issue is in the hands of Michael and the mine board.
Two citizen groups, the Shavers Fork Coalition and
Bowden/Faulkner Citizens Protective Response, appealed the quarry
permit.
Hearings are scheduled to start Tuesday in Charleston.
“We don’t think this permit should have been issued,” said Joe
Lovett, a lawyer with the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the
Environment, which represents the citizen groups. “It does not
comply with the quarry act or the Clean Water Act.”
Saving the springs
Over a hill from U.S. 33, not far from the quarry site, Jim Van
Gundy stuck his head into a small cave.
Water babbled from the opening, along the ground and into a large
storage tank. A handful of area residents get their drinking water
from the tank.
“There’s a good bit of water,” said Van Gundy, who teaches
environmental science at nearby Davis and Elkins College.
Residents fear that the quarry will damage this spring, called
the Burke Spring.
Several other area springs, including one that feeds the state’s
Bowden Fish Hatchery, could also be damaged, they say.
When DEP approves a new coal mine, agency officials perform
detailed studies of the mine’s potential effect on streams and
groundwater supplies. These studies are called Cumulative Hydrologic
Impact Assessments.
Under state and federal coal mine laws, coal permits are not
supposed to be issued if a CHIA shows the mining would cause
“material damage” to the “prevailing hydrologic balance.”
Five years ago, when lawmakers wrote a new state law to regulate
quarries, they did not require similar water impact studies.
With quarry permits, surveys of area water supplies are required.
But there is no real in-depth examination of a quarry’s potential to
sink wells, pollute streams or disturb springs.
“It’s not the same level of detail as a coal permit,” said Rocky
Parsons, a longtime top DEP mining official who helped write the
quarry law.
Most importantly, DEP is not required to reject quarry
applications that could cause material damage to water supplies.
So, in appealing the quarry permit, citizen groups rely on a more
general argument that the quarry will violate state water quality
standards.
Also, the citizens allege that the quarry company has not shown
the need for a valley fill that will bury more than 2,100 feet of a
Shavers Fork tributary.
“Because the valley fill is not constructed in a manner that
minimizes its impacts, the reclamation will not be completed as
required by the act and the regulations,” the citizens said in their
appeal.
Protecting the view
Quarry company President John C. Allen pointed out the window of
the Jeep. Through the trees, the four-lane section of U.S. 33
between Elkins and Harman was barely visible.
“This is the only place you’ll see the quarry,” Allen said.
Area residents are not so sure.
Protest letters against the quarry fill a banker’s box in the
board office at DEP headquarters in Kanawha City.
Residents worry about dust and noise. They fear that the quarry
is “turning a recreational area into an industrial park,” as one
resident said during public hearings in August.
Cat Cole, for example, pointed down the ridge from the edge of
the permit area.
“If you’d like a picture of my house, it’s right down there,” she
said.
Just then, a loud “boom” rang out in the distance.
“I just heard a blast,” Cole said.
DEP staffers on the mine board tour laughed. “Turkey hunting,”
one of them joked.
Just down the road, J.F. Allen operates another quarry called
Mashy Gap. Across the highway, West Virginia Paving has a similar
operation.
Joe Altieri, a DEP quarry inspector, talked about the residents’
concerns in his report on the J.F. Allen application.
“This quarry will be visible from parts of the four-lane and the
Bickel Knob road and tower,” Altieri wrote in a Nov. 18, 2004, memo.
“Many of the protest letters called this area ‘pristine,’” he
wrote.
“Not so. There are two permitted quarries in this area along with
a four-lane highway, at least two abandoned quarries, roads on both
sides of the river and campers stacked up all along the river.”
Altieri wrote, “the protesters have valid concerns.” But, he
said, “The evaluation of aesthetics needs to be made at [DEP]
headquarters and not by the inspector.”
Denying quarry permits
At DEP headquarters, officials have turned down limestone quarry
permits before.
Right now, DEP lawyer Tom Clarke is waiting for a circuit court
ruling on such an action.
In July 2002, then-DEP Mining Director Matthew B. Crum turned
down a Waco Oil and Gas proposal for a 76-acre quarry along W.Va. 39
near Huntersville. Crum cited noise, blasting and dust that he said
would prevent adjacent property owners from enjoying their property
and cause a decline in property values.
Crum also said that the Waco proposal would destroy “aesthetic
values, recreational use and future use of the area and surrounding
areas in this especially scenic and tourist-oriented area.”
In October 2002, the state Surface Mine Board upheld Crum’s
decision. Waco appealed, and both sides are still waiting on Kanawha
Circuit Judge Paul Zakaib to rule.
Since then, Timmermeyer fired Crum as director of DEP’s Division
of Mining and Reclamation. She never gave a detailed reason.
On Dec. 8, Timmermeyer met with opponents of the J.F. Allen
quarry proposal to hear their concerns. Less than a month later, she
approved the company’s permit application.
Joe Parker, a longtime mining inspector, served as Timmermeyer’s
acting mining director until he retired last week.
In a Jan. 10 letter to quarry opponents, Parker explained
Timmermeyer’s reasons for approving the permit. Among other things,
Parker dismissed opponents’ concerns about “cumulative aesthetic
diminution.”
“While no quarry is likely to ever be regarded as aesthetically
‘pleasing,’ the agency has given this issue serious consideration,”
Parker wrote.
“Members of the permit review team have visited the area of the
proposed quarry and viewed its proposed location from at least nine
different vantage points on the ground,” he wrote. “The agency has
also examined the appearance of the proposed quarry from multiple
other vantage points, utilizing software that simulates the
topography of the area in three dimensions.
“Because there are other quarry operations and highway cuts for a
four-lane highway in the same viewshed with the proposed quarry, the
area is not as quiet or pristine as locations where the DEP has
denied quarry permits based on aesthetic impacts,” Parker wrote.
“Consistent with its approach on other applications for a quarry
permit in the same area as an existing quarry, the DEP does not
believe that a quarry permit should be denied here based on it
aesthetic impacts.”
To contact staff writer Ken Ward Jr., use e-mail or call
348-1702.
|
