Final quarry hearing held

Decision on proposed Gibraltar Rock Quarry expansion to come Sept. 7

After 22 zoning hearings on a proposal to expand the controversial Gibraltar Rock Quarry, it’s all over but the waiting.

On Aug. 3, attorneys for the quarrying company, the township and the Paradise Watchdogs activist group all made their final arguments to the three-member zoning hearing board.

The zoning board will announce its final decision at its next meeting on Thursday, Sept. 7.

Stephen Harris, the attorney who has represented Gibraltar Rock through more than 12 years of legal proceedings on a project that has yet to put a shovel in the ground, based his argument on precedent and evidence.

He argued that the expansion to the 18 acres adjacent to the contaminated Good’s Oil property off Route 663 is no different than the two approvals the

zoning hearing board has already given for the operation on the south side of Hoffmansville Road.

Further, Harris said, although his client’s experts do not believe the pumping of thousands of gallons of water per day from the pit will alter the flow of contaminated groundwater, if it does, it will be treated by the quarry, making it a net win for the community.

He said there was no evidence presented that argued the conditions in the water discharge permit Gibraltar must obtain from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection will be inadequate to protect the public’s health.

On the contrary, said Robert Brant, the township’s special counsel on quarry issues

“Gibraltar wants you to believe there is no threat to public health and that DEP will protect you drinking water,” he said.

Brant argued that when the first two special exceptions were granted for the quarry years ago, the groundwater contamination which poisoned dozens of wells and required a $1 million public water system to be installed was unknown.

The zoning board’s previous approval are not legal precedent since the conditions have changed and it is unknown what the zoning board would have ruled had it known about the existence of the groundwater pollution when the first two special exceptions were granted, he said.

He further noted that the zoning hearing board would be wise to take Gibraltar’s legal assertions with a grain of salt, given a number of their previous legal assertions have been rejected in court in the ongoing legal skirmishes with the township.

Brant and Rowan Keenan, the Paradise Watchdogs attorney, both cited experts they hired to testify that the pumping of water for quarry operations could alter the flow of groundwater and make the pollution situation worse — a situation they said gave the zoning board legal grounds to turn down Gibraltar Rock’s application.

“It’s not OK to let a bad situation get worse,” Keenan told the zoning board.

He called Gibraltar’s case “smoke and mirrors.”

The potential for the water pumping of the quarry operations to have an impact on the underground pollution could have been brought to the zoning board’s attention by Gibraltar, “but that’s not who they are.”

It was “only after a bunch of neighbors got together to hire an expert,” that the potential danger was revealed and put into evidence,” Keenan said. As a result, “none of Gibraltar’s testimony is credible.”

Harris said the ground level cleanup of the Good’s Oil site will begin before the end of the year, although a decision by the DEP on how to handle the groundwater pollution has yet to be made.

He said if the quarry expansion is approved by the zoning board, other requirements mean it would be at least five years before digging began there.