Quarry to appeal permit revocation
NEW HANOVER » Just days after a state board of judges rescinded its disputed mining permit, an attorney for Gibraltar Rock says the company seeking to establish a quarry in New Hanover will appeal the decision.
Contacted Wednesday afternoon, Stephen Harris, an attorney for the company, said an appeal of the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board’s decision will be filed with the Commonwealth Court.
That legal action could take 12 to 18 months, he confirmed.
Further, said Harris, Gibraltar Rock, which is part of the Silvi Group of companies, will also apply for a new non-coal mining permit with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Pro
tection’s Pottsville office.
The company will also proceed with the land development process for the sites on both the south and north sides of Hoffmansville Road. Preliminary site plan approval for the original quarry site was approved by the township supervisors in 2015.
Finally, said Harris, the company will “review its options” for remediating the groundwater pollution from an adjacent hazardous cleanup site which quarry operations could draw to the surface, and which is at the center of the township’s objections and the environmental hearing board ruling.
Harris conceded that much of the quarry’s progress is now somewhat dependent on the clean-up of the pollution site, which Gibraltar Rock does not own. However, Harris said he prefers the word “coordinate” to “dependent.”
“That’s the piece that the judges seemed to feel was missing” in the 82-page decision issued April 24 by the five administrative law judges who oversee disputes with the DEP.
That decision rescinded the mining permit issued by the DEP after agreeing with the position taken by the township and the opposition group, Paradise Watchdogs/Ban the Quarry during the five-day trial last fall.
The board ruled that the DEP failed to properly consider how the hazardous site clean-up adjacent to the quarry site would be affected by the start of quarry operations, which will pull thousands of gallons of groundwater a day out of the ground and could pull the underground pollution plume into its pumps and then discharge it into local streams.
Two arms of the DEP are involved in the case. The mining office in Pottsville, Schuylkill County, has jurisdiction over the permit, while the clean-up is being overseen by the Hazardous Sites Clean-up Act program, which operates locally out of Norristown.
The DEP “failed to coordinate its permitting activity with its HSCA activity in violation of its duties,” the judges wrote in their decision.
Harris said he was “disappointed” by the decision,
adding, “I did not think they would rescind the permit.”
But that is exactly what shows the strength of the township’s position, said New Hanover Township Solicitor Andrew Bellwoar after being informed Wednesday of Gibraltar’s intent to appeal.
He said given the “wellreasoned decision, with a solid foundation in law,” he was “surprised” that Gibraltar has opted to appeal the decision, legally termed “a petition to review.”
But Celeste Bish, president of Paradise Watchdogs/Ban the Quarry, wrote that “Gibraltar Rock’s desire to appeal the EHB decision doesn’t surprise us. It proves that they don’t care about the environment, the residents of New Hanover Township, or generations to come.”
In an email response to a query from the Mercury, Bish wrote, “sites like these take years to remediate, if at all. The owners of the company do not live in the township. We are just going to have to fight even harder to ensure they don’t pollute and destroy our environment.”
Until he consults with the township supervisors about the township’s legal response to a potential appeal, Bellwoar was reluctant to comment further, other than to say he agreed with previously published comments Bish made about the decision.
“The DEP has a responsibility to look out for the citizens, it is required to, and clearly the environmental hearing board felt DEP had not fulfilled that obligation,” Bellwoar said.
Whatever other legal strategy discussions the supervisors may have behind closed doors in the coming weeks, at least two supervisors are happy with the hearing board’s decision.
“The township is very pleased that the environmental hearing board judges agreed with the township position that the process by which the permits were issued was flawed,” Supervisors Chairman Charles D. Garner
Jr. wrote in an e-mail response to a Mercury inquiry.
“The health and safety of our residents is paramount. I also want to thank our consultants who did a fantastic job on New Hanover Township’s behalf,” Garner said.
“I am very proud of our board of supervisors, our township manager, Mr. Jamie Gwynn, our township solicitor, Mr. Andrew Bellwoar, and our team of consultants, who all stepped up to achieve this,” supervisor W. Ross Snook wrote in a prepared statement provided to The Mercury.
“I would also like to thank the Ban the Quarry team who also never lost sight of the goal to preserve the safety of our community, and worked countless hours to achieve this,” wrote Snook, who is also chairman of the township’s Environmental Advisory Board.
Gibraltar’s pending appeal of the hearing board decision will be another in the seemingly endless legal battles dating all the way back to 2001 when the quarry was first proposed.
This particular chapter regarding the mining permit began when DEP firstissued a non-coal mining permit in 2005.
It was renewed in 2015 and is for the original quarry proposal, located on land south of Hoffmansville Road, north of Route 73 and west of Church Road, known as GR-1 and the additional property included in its first proposed expansion, known as GR-2.
The appeal of DEP’s renewal of the mining permit being was filed by the township in July of 2018 and joined by Paradise Watchdogs/Ban the Quarry.
The combined site south of Hoffmansville Road is a proposed 241-acre rock quarry and crushing operation on 302 acres of land.
Subsequently, Gibraltar purchased property and filed plans for an expansion on 82 acres on the north side of Hoffmansville Road, also bounded by Church Road to the east and Coleflesh Road to the north. That 82 acres now includes a fourth expansion on 18 adjacent acres, known as GR-4.
Gibraltar’s plans call for rock mined from GR-3 and GR-4 to be carried beneath Hoffmansville Road on a conveyer belt for crushing and processing on the GR-1 site.
The 18 acres in GR-4 are adjacent to the pollution site that has become the center of many of the township’s legal objections.
Much of the township’s argument opposing the permit revolves around the underground chemical pollution discovered in 2011 at a nearby property off Route 663, formerly Good’s Oil.
That contamination ultimately spread through groundwater and required a $2 million expansion of the public water system for those whose wells were contaminated.
The state determined in 2013 that the property, now known as the Hoff VC site, is the source of volatile organic compound chemical contamination of a number of residential wells. The DEP says pollution likely came from an underground pit from which 8,000 gallons of chemicals was extracted and burned in 2016 as part of an initial clean-up there although there may be other sources as well.
Several of the contaminants from that site were found in an observation well just 200 feet from the quarry pit that is subject to the permit, the township wrote in its appeal.
The township worries that the quarry operation, which will require pumping several thousand gallons of groundwater that will seep into quarry pits each day, into a holding basin and then into an unnamed tributary of Swamp Creek, will draw the groundwater contamination out into the open.
Swamp Creek eventually empties into the Perkiomen Creek, which ultimately empties into the Schuylkill River, a source of public drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people.
“I did not think they would rescind the permit.” — Stephen Harris, Gibraltar Rock attorney
“The DEP has a responsibility to look out for the citizens, it is required to and clearly, the environmental hearing board felt DEP had not fulfilled that obligation.” — Andrew Bellwoar, New Hanover Township Solicitor