Neighbors Oppose
Ridge Road Quarry
By Sandy Vondrasek

Neighborhood opposition to a proposed 17-acre ledge-extraction quarry off Randolph’s Ridge Road is growing, in the wake of a January 29 hearing before the Randolph Development Review Board on the proposal.

The quarry proposal, submitted by Sprague Farms LLC, needs site plan, local Act 250, and "use review" under section 2.4.3 of Randolph’s zoning ordinance.

The project would also need full Act 250 review.

The property, about 3.5 miles north of Randolph Center, is in the RU5 district. Part of the former Abbott farm, the parcel has road frontage on Ridge Road and extends to I-89. The quarry would be mined in four phases, with ledge extracted and crushed on site, and trucked out via an approximately 1200-foot-long access road.

The applicant is asking for "an average of 25 truckloads a day," five days a week, in a "seasonal operation," according to Randolph Zoning Administrator Mardee Sanchez.

Project engineer is Rob Townsend of American Consulting Engineers of Williamstown; a principal of the limited liability corporation that is applying for the permit is Gordon Sprague of Florida, who has not attended the hearings.

After an initial review by the DRB in the fall, Townsend was asked to return with more information about trucking, noise from blasting and crushing operations, and dust control.

The second hearing, postponed several times, was held January 29, and featured more than two hours of testimony from a noise expert, a quarry operator, and representatives from Maine Drilling and Blasting.

Review of the quarry proposal will continue at the DRB’s February 26 meeting. The hearing will begin at 7 p.m., at the Langevin House, off Furnace Road in Randolph Center, and the quarry is one of several applications on the agenda.

Sanchez said that abuttors have been asked to submit any of their questions in writing.

She noted there had been some talk about a site visit, preceding the hearing, but as of this week, none had been scheduled. She said project engineer Townsend "would welcome" a site visit, but with deep snow on the ground, a tour of the site would not be easy.

Abuttor Concerns

A number of concerned abuttors and near neighbors of the proposed quarry attended the January hearing on the quarry. According to one of them, Phil Angell, members of the group are going door-to-door along Ridge Road to advise residents of the proposal, researching quarry operations elsewhere in the state, and looking into hiring a noise expert of their own.

Angell and his wife Rosie, who live across Ridge Road from the project site, and several abuttors came to The Herald Monday to talk about their concerns.

Last month’s hearing wasn’t the neighbors’ first notice of the proposed quarry. They noted that project engineer Townsend met with them before the project application was submitted to the DRB, There had been some talk about a quarry, and some "large equipment that was knocking over trees" on the parcel, in the last year.

The neighbors indicated their primary worry is the amount of traffic that the project would generate. According to Angell, testimony at the January hearing indicated the "average of 25 trucks per day" meant that there could be as few as two or more than 100 truckloads per day.

Abuttor Judy Deep is going door-to-door on the Brookfield section of Ridge Road, to let those residents know that some of the trucks leaving the quarry would travel north to Route 65, past their homes.

Several of the neighbors said they were puzzled why the town’s public works director said the project would not adversely affect town roads.

This week Zoning Administrator Sanchez clarified that, as part of the local Act 250 review process, Randolph Public Works Director John Rotter had to determine if the project would cause "an undue burden on road maintenance." Given that Ridge Road is presently in need of repairs, Rotter determined the work would not be "undue."

That "undue" bar, Sanchez stressed, is set by Act 250.

The neighbors are also concerned about noise and dust from quarry operations.

Chet Abbot, who lives with his wife Betsy in the old Abbot farm homestead just south of the proposed access road, is also concerned.

"The last DRB meeting, their sound person there—I found a lot of what he was saying sounded kind of questionable," Abbot said. "He gave the impression that we weren’t going to hear a thing, which I think is a stretch."

Abbot is looking into the costs and possible benefits of hiring a noise expert to testify on behalf of the neighbors.

A number of the abuttors stressed they didn’t consider themselves "NIMBY" (Not In My Back Yard) types, and there were "lots of uses," as one said, that they would find acceptable in their neighborhood.

But a 17-acre quarry and up to 100 truckloads a day would completely change the character of their residential/agricultural neighborhood, David Deep said.

As Phil Angell wrote in a letter to the DRB: "No one advertises their property or their neighborhood as conveniently located near a landfill or a rock quarry."