Rocks and Rules

BY WESLEY YOUNG
SALISBURY POST

It's a rare rock quarry in Rowan County that abides by all the state regulations, state records show.

But it's also rare to find instances where the state has attempted to fine a quarry, or where the state has refused a mining permit.

The case of Balfour Quarry in Granite Quarry was one of the recent exceptions. There, the state levied a fine of $5,625 after repeated inspections showed the quarry allegedly failed to abide by state mining rules, and even tossed some stones onto neighboring properties in an errant blast.

Before that, the state levied a $10,400 fine against the White Camellia quarry, then operated by Salisbury restaurateur Gianni Moscardini. But the quarry had already shut down, and the state wound up collecting only $5,000.

It wasn't a fine, but in 1996 the state did confiscate a $5,000 bond that operators of the Salisbury Pink Quarry had put up for eventual reclamation of their site. The state claimed the bond because the quarry wasn't reclaimed when mining stopped.

In most cases, however, the state has relied on prodding rather than penalties as a way to try to get quarry operators to abide by their mining permits.

And even when the state finds a quarry out of compliance with the regulations, it doesn't keep quarry operators from getting their permits renewed.

Quarries have been grabbing a lot of attention in Rowan County lately, as county commissioners have wrestled with how to protect neighbors from noise and dust.

So the Post examined rock quarry files at the state's Land Quality office in Mooresville. Land Quality inspects the quarries, issues permits, checks for violations and investigates complaints.

The files, which are open for public inspection, contain inspection reports, notices of violations, logs of citizen complaints and memos swapped back and forth between staffers.

In their memos, staffers express growing frustration over dealing with quarries.

"I would like to go to the site with you and make a decision about this site (Balfour Quarry) and Rockwell Granite," Doug Miller, Land Quality's regional supervisor, said in a memo to one of his bosses in Raleigh before the fine against Balfour. "We also need to decide in general how to handle this industry which seems to have a mind of its own and chooses to not want to comply with permit regulations."

Miller goes on to point out that past enforcement actions have focused on those mining without a permit. The state has worked with those that did have a permit to bring them into compliance. xxx*shNine active quarries

State regulators list 28 locations in Rowan County they regulate as mining activities. Of these, only 16 are quarries. The rest are clay mines or sand dredging operations that also come under Land Quality's eye.

Of the 16 quarries, nine are listed as active, and one has been merged into another active quarry. Of the nine active quarries, two produce crushed stone.

The other seven are the ones that most people complain about: quarries that cut free large pieces of stone, usually with blasting and sometimes with burning.

They carry evocative names that bespeak their reputed qualities: Solar White, Crystal Pink, Cameo Rose, White Gardenia.

Some neighbors may have less pleasant names for them, but the neighbors also get impatient with the state for finding quarries out of compliance time after time, but not levying fines or yanking permits.

In an interview with the Post, Miller admitted that he can't satisfy those neighbors. For one thing, he doesn't have the manpower to do the kind of enforcement that's needed. For another, the rules are written to try to get quarries to abide by them, not to simply shut them down.

"When people complain, they expect same-day action," Miller said. "We can't give it. If we find a problem, we have to allow the operator time to comply with the permit. A lot of people feel like it is like a speeding ticket" - pay the fine or else - but that's not the case.

Miller said you must also distinguish between the kind of violation that would be serious enough to shut down a quarry and ones that are less serious. He compares quarry inspections to the kind of building inspections that might be done on the county level.

"I can go onto any construction site and say it is in violation," Miller said.

Even if things get to the stage of a fine, the operator can contest the penalty in an administrative hearing. To actually shut a quarry down, the state would have to get a court injunction showing immediate peril to life, property or the environment.

Miller said he only has the manpower to put spend half of one employee's time each year on inspecting and monitoring the quarries.

"The key issue is, we don't have enough manpower," Miller said. "We have had high turnover of staff. We are supposed to inspect each one once a year. We are not doing it." xxx*shLoud and clear

If the state had more inspectors, however, it wouldn't cure the problem most people complain about: noise.

Nothing in the state regulations limit the amount of noise a jet burner can emit as it cuts through rock, Miller said. The state can monitor blasting and does investigate blasts that go above the permitted noise level.

Noise apart from blasting "is a big issue, and it is something we don't address in the Mining Act" that regulates quarries, Miller said.

Miller said dimension stone quarries - the ones that break loose sizeable chunks of rock - have been much harder to regulate than crushed stone operations.

Here are more common types of problems that surfaced during inspection reports:

-Failing to adequately install or maintain drainage basins, which are designed to keep runoff from getting onto nearby properties or in streams.

-Failing to put barriers in place that would keep people from accidentally falling into a quarry.

-Excavating or doing other activities outside of the permitted area, and otherwise making changes without seeking a change in the mining permit.

-Failing to install visual barriers such as berms or vegetation.

-Not reclaiming mined areas as ordered. This can include leaving behind rusting metal equipment and other debris.

The state's decision to cite a mine with a formal violation notice or worse - a fine - depends often whether the problem leads to damage off the mine property.

Miller's staff has to focus on the worst cases: flagrant disregard of the rules, rocks landing in yards and off-site damage.

When stuff goes flying through the air, though, the regulators do come running. That happened most recently at Balfour Quarry, where neighbors called the state July 8 to report that blasting had tossed rocks onto their yards. One stone weighed almost four pounds. The next day, state regulators slapped a notice of violation on the quarry. And the fine soon followed.

But that's nothing compared to an incident at Woodleaf Quarry in 1990. There, a quarry blast sent a 33-pound rock flying 1,670 feet away from the site of the explosion. The rock landed in Frank Lindsey's yard, though it caused no damage.

The incident resulted in a notice of violation but no fine. The quarry operators, Martin Marietta, promptly brought the incident to the attention of the state, unlike the case with Balfour, where, among other offenses, regulators chided the quarry with failing to report the errant blast.

But if the state can do little to regulate quarry noise, others can do a lot. Mining permits state that a quarry or other mine must abide by local regulations.

Also, Miller said, local regulations can be tougher on the quarries than the state regulations. Yet he acknowledges that some communities may not be aware of the upper hand they hold in policing quarries. xxx*shThe grandfather clause

County Planner Marion Lytle pointed out that state regulations also do not take into account the number of people living around prospective quarries when deciding whether to issue permits.

But existing quarries, because they predate zoning, can't simply be forced out of business, Lytle said.

"We need to decide what it would take to make existing quarries acceptable to the neighborhood besides closing them down," Lytle said.

At Balfour Quarry, office manager Jeremy Sholar said his company is trying to solve complaints from the state and upset neighbors as fast as it can. Sholar said Balfour is contesting the penalty the state leveled, and added that the state's timetables have been unrealistic.

"This was the first time for all of us," Sholar said. "We didn't know all the rules and regulations. If we had known about them, we would have done them, no doubt about it. Some things they asked us to do at the beginning, it was impossible to get them done in the time frame they requested. We asked for an extension and got turned down.

"At the same time, we have a business to run. We are trying to do things the state wants and, at the same time, earn money."

Sholar said blast readings show the ground doesn't shake enough to damage any nearby houses - that the noise people hear at a blast is air compression, like the sound of a thunderbolt.

Miller, with the state, believes noise issues are best handled "at the local level."

County officials are beginning to take quarry noise complaints seriously. The county recently issued a warning against Dunns Mountain Pink Granite Quarry for exceeding noise limits. Though the first warning doesn't carry a fine, future violations will carry an escalating level of payments, starting at $25 and increasing to $100 a day.

The county ordinance sets the maximum decibel limit at 75, which is comparable to a telephone ringing or a vacuum cleaner operating in a room.

However, the county's noise limits still may not prevent people from getting an earache from a site like the Pink Granite Quarry, which sits on top of a hill.

"You couldn't build a berm big enough to shield the operation," Miller said.

One thing seems clear, looking at the record of quarry inspections going back to 1972: State officials have gotten tougher on inspections and enforcing the rules governing mines.

For many quarries, early mine inspections uniformly found everything OK. But as the 1990s approached, quarries that had sailed through before now found themselves repeatedly out of compliance with the rules.

But the people living near the mines say: Not tough enough, not soon enough.