Long-dormant quarry back in operation -- to some neighbors' dismay

Bill Tomlin was sitting in his house on Aug. 2, 2010, when he experienced what felt like an earthquake. The tremor, Tomlin said, was violent enough to shake all the windows in his house and jar the china.

The quake, it turned out, was the result of rock blasting at a quarry near Tomlin’s property on Earlysville Road. The quarry, which had been dormant since 1975, had been bought by Rockydale Quarries, a company from Roanoke, and work to remove stone from the site had resumed. The quarry’s address is on Rio Mills Road, and the back of the operation faces the back of Tomlin’s property.

Tomlin and his neighbors say the mine is an almost-constant source of noise and vibration.

Robert Bogley, Tomlin’s neighbor, said he won’t be satisfied until the quarry ceases operation.

“The blasting, the grinding, the extracting of the rock ... The blasting shakes our house. It’s like anticipating an earthquake once a month,” Bogley said. According to Bogley, he and his wife were surprised when the site resumed operations, as it had been quiet for so many years.

“The bottom line is that we, in this area of the neighborhood anyway, feel blindsided by the reopening of this mine,” he said.

Albemarle County zoning officer J.T. Newberry has measured noise levels from the quarry’s stone grinder at 51 decibels at Tomlin’s house. That, he said, is within the county’s noise regulations. According to Newberry, 55 decibels is the limit.

Noise levels are determined by averaging 300 individual decibel readings taken over a five-minute period. According to Newberry, 51 decibels is about the equivalent noise of a normal conversation.

Still, Tomlin and Bogley want the noise to end. To get their concerns addressed, they petitioned the Board of Supervisors to require the business to cease operations until the environmental impact of the mine and the permitting process to reopen it can be reviewed.

Both Bogley and Tomlin live about half a mile from the quarry. According to Rockydale Quarries Vice President of Operations David Willis, neighbors closer to the quarry were told rock grinding and blasting would resume.

“We did notify all of our adjacent landowners and we actually went out farther than that. Some of those people [who signed] the petition were not visited because they were so far from the site,” Willis said. “In hindsight, I wish we would have gone out a little farther.”

Tomlin and Bogley both said they have taken the issue to county Supervisor Rodney Thomas, of the Rio District, but haven’t gotten any satisfaction.

“We do not feel at all that our representation on the Board of Supervisors has been friendly to the neighborhood at all,” Bogley said. “It has been absolutely pro-business ... I feel that business interests are being pushed ahead at the expense of constituents in the neighborhood.”

Thomas said he is working both with residents near the quarry and with Willis to address residents’ concerns.

“It’s up to Rockydale Quarry to alleviate the noise. I’ve asked [Willis] to step up. I want to find a happy medium so that the business can run and be a viable business and pay taxes to the county, but I also want the residents to be happy,” Thomas said. “These are good people that own this quarry, and they’re good people that live around there, and not just as constituents, these are my friends.”

According to county zoning administrator Amelia McCulley, the quarry resumed operating on a permit originally issued to Superior Stone, when it opened the quarry in 1965. When the county passed its first zoning ordinance in 1969, she said, the site was automatically zoned for heavy industry.

According to Willis, the quarry was bought by Martin Marietta Materials in 1972, and closed in 1975. At that point, the company covered and re-seeded parts of the site, as required by law.

In 1980, when the county passed a comprehensive zoning ordinance, the site was given a natural-resource extraction overlay. That means the site can be operated as a quarry by whoever owns it, as long as they stay within the limits of the original permit. It also means there was no public comment period necessary to reopen the site in 2010.

“Zoning allowed the use, so there was no public hearing like people are used to,” McCulley said. She added that because the site had been maintained by previous owners with an up-to-standard parking area and driveway, Rockydale did not have to submit a site plan.

“If you have an entrance that meets standards and parking, you don’t need a site plan,” McCulley said. “They had both.”

According to Willis, even if there had not been an existing permit to operate the site, obtaining one would not have been much of a hurdle.

“If the operator, or whoever holds the permit, acts within the terms of the permit, it stays valid,” he said. “But the permit is sort of a moot point because as long as the land is zoned for that use, the permit gets issued.”

Zoning officials have told Tomlin that the quarry is operating within acceptable noise limits. Vernon Harris, an inspector with the state Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy, has told Tomlin that the quarry’s blasts are within acceptable limits, Tomlin said.

“[Harris] has determined that his readings have not been in violation,” Tomlin said, adding that the tremors are still disruptive. “We’ve got to get the blasting down to where the level is reasonable.” According to Tomlin, Harris came to his house to take seismograph readings.

Harris declined to comment on any specific complaints he had received or specific investigations he had made.

“All I can say is, as far as the DMME is concerned, they’re operating within the law,” Harris said. “Every review that I have done of the records, they have been within the limits.”

Willis said the company has arranged a meeting with the quarry’s neighbors to hear, and try to address, their concerns. Rockydale has a quarry within the city limits of both Roanoke and nearby Salem. At the Roanoke site, Willis said, there are 500 houses within 1,000 feet of the quarry.

“Can we be good neighbors? Absolutely we can,” he said. “It goes back in the culture of our company, we try to be the best neighbors we can.”

According to Willis, his company is working to lower noise levels from the site. The company has just purchased new, quieter equipment, he said, and is close to having electricity run to the site. Currently, the operation runs on diesel generators, which contribute to the noise. The site should have power by the end of this week, Willis said.

Rockydale will host a community meeting at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the DoubleTree Hotel on Hilton Heights Road to discuss residents’ concerns.