Judge orders state to allow proposed rock quarry on RDU airport land near Umstead park
A proposed quarry next to Umstead State Park on land owned by Raleigh-Durham International Airport is back on again after a judge overturned a decision by state environmental regulators to deny a mining permit.
Administrative law judge Donald van der Vaart said the state agency that regulates mining waited too long to make a decision about the permit and that the agency’s director, Brian Wrenn, was not authorized to make it.
But van der Vaart also said Wrenn misapplied state regulations when he concluded in February 2022 that the proposed quarry would have “a significantly adverse effect on the purposes of a publicly owned park.” Van der Vaart wrote that the mining company, Wake Stone Corp., provided plenty of evidence to show it could operate an open pit mine next to William B. Umstead State Park without harming the park and called Wrenn’s decision “arbitrary and capricious.”
“The small area of the park potentially affected by the proposed operation would not, due to the prohibition against visitors in that area, affect anything at all,” van der Vaart wrote.
Mining permit within 30 days?
Administrative law judges like van der Vaart hear appeals from companies, organizations and individuals who feel that a state agency is not properly applying the law. Van der Vaart, who was Secretary of the Department of Environmental Quality for two years under Gov. Pat McCrory, ordered DEQ’s Division of Energy, Mineral, and Land Resources to issue the mining permit within 30 days.
The agency can appeal his ruling to Superior Court. A spokesman said Monday that DEQ was reviewing van der Vaart’s 53-page ruling and had no other comment.
The permit is actually a new version of an existing one that has allowed Wake Stone to operate the Triangle Quarry on property between Umstead and Interstate 40 since the 1980s.
The modified permit would allow the company to build a new quarry across Crabtree Creek on 105 acres it has leased from RDU known as the Odd Fellows property. Stone from the 400-foot-deep pit mine would be moved via a new bridge over the creek to the company’s existing operation off North Harrison Avenue, where it would be crushed and washed and trucked to customers.
Wake Stone has made lease payments to RDU since the airport’s governing board approved the mining lease in March 2019.
“We are pleased with the judge’s ruling, which allows for the expansion of the existing Triangle Quarry onto the adjacent RDU Airport property,” Sam Bratton, the company’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “We look forward to beginning the mining process while upholding our 50+ year commitment to our industry’s highest environmental and safety standards.”
A controversial quarry
The proposed quarry has been controversial since it showed up on the airport’s 25-year master plan, called Vision 2040, which was approved in 2016. Opponents say the state parks department has long hoped to acquire the wooded property off Old Reedy Creek Road to add to Umstead State Park, which shares a long boundary with the airport.
Jean Spooner, head of The Umstead Coalition, a park advocacy group, said the quarry is incompatible with Umstead and Old Reedy Creek Road, which is now part of the East Coast Greenway trail.
“There is no doubt that a heavy industrial operation with over 400 huge quarry haul trucks passing daily within 25 feet of William B. Umstead State Park and the East Coast Greenway, blasting, dust, rocks crashing, etc. will have a devastating impact on our prized public recreational corridor,” Spooner said in a written statement.
RDU acquired the Odd Fellows property in the 1970s as part of a plan to build a new runway that was never built.
In 2017, the airport’s governing board turned down an offer from The Conservation Fund, a national environmental organization, to buy the 105 acres for $6.46 million so it could be added to Umstead. At the time, airport officials say they did not want to sell any property.
Instead, the Airport Authority approved a lease with Wake Stone allowing it to mine the property for up to 35 years. At the time, RDU expected to received $24 million over the life of the lease, mostly in royalty payments as stone is removed and sold.
