Proposed Extraction Ordinances By Charlestown Challenged By Industry

Yesterday we brought you the story of homeowners in the communities of Westerly and Charlestown who say their lives have been disrupted by the rock blasting at a neighboring quarry. Charlestown is working on ordinances that would regulate this industry. Town officials are trying to balance the interest of homeowners and sand and gravel business owners. But one local operator said those proposed ordinances would create hardships for the industry – an industry he said is already struggling to survive. This is the second installment of a two-part series. You can read the first installment here.

 

If you drive through a residential neighborhood in Wakefield, you’d never know that there was a sand and gravel operation in the neighborhood, because it’s relatively quiet. It isn’t until you start approaching the property of South County Sand and Gravel that you begin to hear big trucks and the sounds of rock-crushing machines. There’s no stone blasting at this plant.

Roland Fiore owns and runs the company his father founded 1952. He invited Rhode Island Public Radio for a driving tour of his facilities. On the day of the tour, he parked his truck on an overlook.

“You have a bird’s eye view of the entire plant,” said Fiore. “You’re sitting at what we would call the primary feed to the plant. This is where the raw material is dumped in either by truck or front end loader and goes through the various manufacturing stations at the plant to produce the end product.

This plant produces four types of stone in different sizes, and two types of sand.

“And these products are used in everything from septic systems to erosion control, asphalt used in road building, concrete, concrete pipe, beach erosion and many other uses,” said Fiore.

Fiore said his sand and gravel deposits are dwindling, but the demand for the material is growing and will continue to grow as we anticipate more extreme weather events.

The state geologist and the geologist at the Coastal Resources Management Council confirm that Rhode Island has a great need for sand. The federal government recently awarded the state money to look for offshore sand in order to replenish beaches. Much of our sand resources on land are locked up in protected open spaces, or cities and towns have developed over them. The existing sand and gravel pits don’t have enough to meet the state’s future needs, especially if people want to replenish beaches after storms.

“Whenever there’s a—let’s say—a natural disaster, the first phone call goes to the local sand and gravel, or quarry operator,” said Fiore. “[They say],’we need stone, we need sand, etc. to fill in for where the hurricane or the road has collapsed.’ But everybody has forgotten that this material has to be processed, warehoused, and they take for granted that we have it.”

Fiore said he and his colleagues in the industry rely heavily on recycling cement and asphalt concrete as a way to be resourceful. He’s said these days it’s difficult to be in this industry.

Cities and town across Rhode Island can’t stop the operations of those mining and sand and gravel companies that have been around before cities and towns adopted zoning ordinances. That’s because these types of operations have grandfather rights. But cities and towns can pass ordinances to prevent new sand and gravel businesses from opening up or current ones from expanding. From a municipal perspective, the ordinances are meant to minimize the impacts associated with this industry. Fiore recognizes them a few of them, for example.

“There are some things that go with the business, [such as] occasional noise if the wind is in the wrong way, dust, etc.,” said Fiore. “And the ways to counter that are just common sense approaches and constant monitoring of the operation. Most of our employees have been with us for quite some period, so they really have a handle on what’s acceptable and what’s not.”

Fiore said you just have to be a good operator. And he said that’s easy. He’s planted trees around his plant to buffer noise. His staff frequently water down the trucks and roads they use to prevent dust from traveling. His diesel trucks have been built with stringent standards to ensure they aren’t leaking anything. And his plant is usually done crushing and processing stone, sand, and gravel by 5 p.m. or earlier than that.

Fiore said his sand and gravel pits will eventually peak with no new ones to open on the horizon.

“And eventually that’s going to cause problems for the state as far as cost and ability to supply local projects, forcing the products to come from out of state at a much higher cost,” said Fiore.

In the past year the town of Charlestown has proposed ordinances that Fiore believes would make it more difficult for local sand and gravel operators, like himself, to stay in business. He owns a quarry in Charlestown.

But Charlestown town officials said they’re not out to target sand and gravel operations. It’s not that simple. They say a Westerly quarry operation that borders Charlestown is having a negative impact on the lives of several of their residents. They say that quarry, operated by Armetta, LLC, formerly known as Copar Quarries, LLC, was dormant for more than 30 years, until Copar began to lease the quarry from its current owners and started blasting stone.

“We can see that operation in their neighborhood as a blight,” said Charlestown town council member George Tremblay. “It’s a cancer really on the environment that they were accustomed to living in, before this operation started and we’re trying to keep that cancer from metastasizing in Charlestown. But with any chemotherapy, there are side effects. Our concern is that those side effects be minimalized in terms of affecting the good business operators.”

Read more from George Tremblay about the council’s efforts.

The Charlestown Town Council has proposed several ordinances to regulate sand and gravel companies in their town. But they’ve withdrawn those proposed ordinances, because sand and gravel operators say they violate their land rights and won’t hold up in court. The council is still trying to come up with an ordinance modeled after ones passed by other cities and towns in Rhode Island.

Other towns that have passed ordinances to regulate activities from the “extraction” industry include Middletown, Jamestown, Smithfield, Coventry, Tiverton, Hopkinton, Glocester, Portsmouth, West Greenwich, and East Greenwich. Zoning ordinances vary from place to place. The Charlestown town council has asked the state to help them with their efforts, said town council president Tom Gentz.

“The work that we have in front of us is this balancing act to make sure that our operations that have done a good job will continue to be functioning and continue to employ Rhode Island workers,” said Gentz, “and continue to, at the same time, protect the health and safety of our residents.”

In Westerly, the quarry owner and operator, the town of Westerly, and a few residents are in the middle of different legal battles. Earlier this year, the town and quarry reached a settlement through the Rhode Island Superior Court. The agreement they reached affirms the quarry’s rights to operate at any intensity, at any hours and in any manner. Gentz, other Charlestown council members, and affected residents wonder how that settlement will play out in Charlestown.

“There are about six or seven existing operations and some operations that have been abandoned for a number of years that could start up the same process,” said Gentz. “So we want to try to get an extraction ordinance prepared to regulate in a proper way, to protect the health safety welfare of Charlestown residents, while at the same time trying to work with the existing extraction operations in the town.”

And their concerns are not off. Scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey say that in the Eastern United States, more sand and gravel companies are moving toward crushing stone. They say traditional sand and gravel pits diminish faster because they are wide and shallow. With zoning ordinances, it’s become difficult and expensive to open up new operations. So the other option is to reopen long-standing quarries, because that type of land has protected uses that existed before cities and towns adopted zoning ordinances. In other words, the right to mine and quarry stays with the land itself, regardless of the owner or operator, said Roland Fiore. And that’s essentially how courts tend to rule these cases.

Fiore owns a quarry in Charlestown that he hasn’t needed to tap into in recent years. He said he works to find a balance between being good to the next door neighbors and working in his quarry.

“That quarry does not require any blasting, because most of the stone is loose. Its’ on the surface, we call it,” said Fiore. “Most of that stone will be handled and moved off site where it will be set in breakwaters that you see in the ocean front or brought to another site and reduced.”

Fiore said this whole issue is a double-edged sword. He said his industry pulls sand and gravel to use on roads, beaches, and as filters for the state-of-the-art septic systems. But nobody wants that industry in their backyards.