Pa. Supreme Court denies New Hanover quarry’s final appeal

NEW HANOVER — Gibraltar Rock has lost yet another court decision in its 24-year effort to open a quarry in town, but the attorney for the company says the company will continue its efforts to build it.

On Tuesday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued an order refusing Gibraltar’s request to appeal the latest decision which rescinded the company’s mining permit

In June, Gibraltar Rock attorney Stephen Harris announced the company would appeal the decision by the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court re-affirming the rescinding of a crucial state mining permit needed for quarrying to begin.

The Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the appeal “was not a surprise,” Harris told MediaNews Group Friday. “But the fact that we pushed the appeal for a second time, we wanted to leave no stone unturned,” he said.

“It took them over 24 years to get to this point last time. Ban the Quarry/Paradise Watchdogs considers this a major victory for the citizens and environment of New Hanover Township and will continue to vigorously fight any attempt by Gibraltar to operate a quarry in New Hanover Township,” wrote attorney Chris Mullaney in a message to MediaNews Group.

Mullaney is the attorney for Ban the Quarry/Paradise Watchdogs, the citizens group that joined with the township’s legal challenges to the project.

“The township is pleased with the Supreme Court’s decision to deny Gibraltar Rock’s appeal. This outcome reaffirms the diligent efforts of our community and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to protect our local environment and uphold the rule of law,” wrote New Hanover Township Manager Jamie Gwynn, in response to a query from MediaNews Group. “We remain committed to safeguarding the interests of our residents and ensuring a sustainable future for generations to come.”

“The township spent considerable time and resources to protect the environment and the residents of the township,” wrote Andrew Bellwoar, the former township attorney who remains New Hanover’s attorney in the quarry matter. “I am thankful we were able to achieve this result.”

“Without a mining permit, Gibraltar must start the mining application process from the beginning if they wish to ever operate a Quarry in New Hanover,” Mullaney wrote.

In May, when the permit rescission decision was re-affirmed, Bellwoar called it, “the death knell” of the quarry plan. But Harris insists reports of the plan’s death are premature.

While Gibraltar Rock must now begin the process of obtaining a mining permit from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection — a potentially more difficult task given the groundwater contamination that has been uncovered adjacent to the proposed mining pit — the company can still rely upon the preliminary site plan approval it received from the then-supervisors in 2015, said Harris.

That decision is important because it preserves the company’s right to continue to pursue the quarry under the zoning in place when the company first applied 24 years ago, Harris said.

In 2021, a very different set of supervisors voted unanimously to reject the final site plan approval Gibraltar was seeking. That matter is now resting comfortably in a different court and “shows no sign of being scheduled for a hearing,” Bellwoar said in May.

In the meantime, the current supervisors have changed the zoning for the site. It was heavy/light industrial when the quarry first submitted its plans, but the supervisors changed it to simply “light industrial,” which would make the rock crushing and paving plant operations planned there incompatible with current zoning.

Whether the absence of a mining permit invalidates the company’s position that it is “grandfathered” and its plans must be considered under the previous zoning is a matter that may well end up back in court.

“That’s certainly our position, but we recognize the township has a right to challenge that,” Harris said Friday. As his company sees it, both the permit and township approval are necessary for the quarry to begin operations, “but they are independent of each other. One is overseen and determined by the DEP and one by the municipal government.”

As for the DEP side of things, obtaining mining will now likely involve cleaning up the groundwater pollution at the former Good’s Oil site off Route 663, known in state parlance as the Hoff VOC site.

The contamination there was first discovered in 2011, six years after Gibraltar first received a mining permit in 2005, and required the installation of public water to those homes whose wells were now contaminated.

The issue is relevant because quarry operations would require the pumping of thousands of gallons of groundwater as the stone quarry digs deeper into the water table.

The plan calls for dumping water that seeps into the pit into a tributary of Swamp Creek, which, is in turn, a tributary of Perkiomen Creek, a public drinking water source.

The now rescinded mining permit had been renewed in 2015 and was for the original quarry proposal, located on land south of Hoffmansville Road, north of Route 73 and west of Church Road, known as GR-1 and the additional property included in its first proposed expansion, known as GR-2.

The combined site south of Hoffmansville Road is a proposed 241-acre rock quarry and crushing operation on 302 acres of land.

Subsequently, Gibraltar purchased the property and filed plans for an expansion on 82 acres on the north side of Hoffmansville Road, also bounded by Church Road to the east and Coleflesh Road to the north. That 82 acres now includes a fourth expansion on 18 adjacent acres, known as GR-4.

Gibraltar’s plans call for rock mined from GR-3 and GR-4 to be carried beneath Hoffmansville Road on a conveyor belt for crushing and processing on the GR-1 site.

The 18 acres in GR-4 are adjacent to the pollution site that has become the center of many of the legal objections to the permit’s renewal.

It remains unknown how much property of the combined properties Gibraltar will now seek a permit to mine.