What a state agency could do to prevent mining near Umstead State Park

The Umstead Coalition has been fighting to protect Umstead State Park for decades. It prevented a major highway from bisecting the park, fought off efforts to sell portions of it for development, and proposals for a Six-Flags Over Carolina theme park.

Today the Umstead Coalition, Triangle Off-Road Cyclists (TORC), Sierra Club Capital Group, and others, are opposing Wake Stone’s new open mine pit on the Odd Fellows tract, land adjacent to the park and to Crabtree Creek, the East Coast Greenway, and a private residence.

The Odd Fellows tract is managed by the Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority, but deeded to four local governments. The tract can only be quarried if Wake Stone’s current Triangle Quarry, located on private land next to Umstead State Park, is allowed to remain open past its promised 50-year term.

The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) denied the Triangle Quarry permit in August 1980. A hearing ensued. The state Mining Commission recommended approval of the permit in its April 1981 final decision document. Negotiations between the Mining Commission and DEQ followed, and DEQ approved the Triangle Quarry permit in May 1981.

Per the permit cover letter, the mining permit language was based on information supplied by Wake Stone, but “with conditions added ... in order to provide maximum protection to William B. Umstead State Park.”

This included a sunset provision which said that mining operations at the Triangle Quarry would stop “…at the end of 50 years from the date quarrying commences or 10 years after quarrying operations have ceased without having been resumed, whichever is sooner...”

The sunset provision stood through eight subsequent permit modifications. In 2011, Wake Stone attempted to gut the 50-year sunset provision claiming it was a “typographical error.” DEQ staff at that time were familiar with the original permit and understood the sunset provision to be an essential component of the original permit and denied Wake Stone’s request.

Fast forward to March 2018. Wake Stone appealed to a new interim DEQ Mining director, who allowed the permit by changing one word, “sooner” to “later” and issued a new permit.

My review of the 1980 hearing files and the state’s archives uncovered information and documents that support the sunset clause. The veracity of the sunset provision has also been firmly corroborated by people like Rufus Edmisten, who was N.C. Attorney General at the time of Wake Stone’s 1981 Triangle Quarry mining permit.

Quarries enjoy special treatment via the Mining Act of 1971 that list only seven criteria for denial of a permit, one being “...the operation will have significant effect on the uses of a publicly-owned park, forest, recreation areas…” The new quarry pit and the continued operation of the Triangle Quarry harm Umstead State Park. Absent the illegal 2018 gutting of the sunset provision from the original 1981 permit, the Triangle Quarry would fall silent in 2032.

The quarry isn’t the only challenge to Umstead State Park, but it is the most harmful and most significant in that if Wake Stone is successful in mining the publicly owned Odd Fellows tract, RDU will own the legacy of inviting the first private quarry on public land in our state.

The appropriate actions are for DEQ Mining to restore the sunset provision from the original Triangle Quarry permit and to deny the proposed new open mine pit on the Odd Fellows tract.