New plan pushes quarry decision to March
NEW HANOVER » A decision on the fate of the Gibraltar Rock Quarry has been delayed until at least March.
A decision had loomed during an Oct. 26 meeting but when all was said and done — quite a lot was said and very little done — Gibraltar Rock was given until Dec. 9 to submit a revised plan.
That happened on Dec. 1, when a revised site plan was submitted.
Twelve days before the Oct. 26 meeting, the New Hanover Planning Commission had voted unanimously to recommend against approving the final site plan for the project, which has been a legal and political football for nearly 20 years.
But according to a letter from Township Manager Jamie Gwynn to Gibraltar Rock attorney Stephen Harris, the revised final site plan, which presumably addresses some of the issues raises at the two meetings in October, re-starts a legal 90-day clock.
“The deadline for the governing body to render a decision on the Third Revised Plan and communicate it to the applicant is March 9, 2021,” Gwynn wrote.
“The fourth revised plan will be discussed by the planning commission during its meeting on Feb. 10, 2021, and by the board of supervisors during its meeting on Feb. 22, 2021,” Gwynn wrote.
It was June 2015 when the
township supervisors approved the preliminary site plan for the massive project. That approval contained language that said final site plan approval could not be granted without the project satisfying a long list of conditions.
In August, Gwynn sent a letter to Gibraltar noting since the preliminary approval in 2015, the township has granted eighttime extensions to allow the company to meet the conditions in the preliminary site plan approval.
In that time the township received three revisions for the plan, the last arriving in September, shortly after Gwynn issued his letter.
The letter informed Gibraltar the township would not be granting any more extensions and made note of the company’s failure to meet the conditions both of the preliminary site plan approval, as well as the conditions of the 2017 approval granted by the zoning hearing board.
Since the preliminary plan was approved, Gibraltar or Sahara Sand — both are part of the same Fairless Hills-based company — have purchased several of the 54 parcels that surround the quarry site, including one adjacent to the township recreation center on Hoffmansville Road.
The revision to the site plan submitted in September listed eight parcels that add up to just over 218 acres.
In addition to the planning and zoning battles, proposed expansions of the proposed project have encroached on property adjacent to a site at the former Good’s Oil where contaminated groundwater has been located.
Further complicating consideration of aspects of the project has been the concern that the water that must be pumped from the ground to allow the quarry pit to remain dry could draw the contamination to the surface.