The crusher operated without a permit for years in the Graniteville area of town, and after the Vermont Supreme Court forced its owner to apply for a permit, the company simply turned it off and started up another crusher 3,000 feet away.
That second rock crusher continues to operate, also without a permit, and state enforcement authorities say they’re uncertain whether they have authority to do anything about it.
The District 5 Environmental Commission this month refused to issue a permit to Northeast Materials Group for its first rock crusher in the Rock of Ages quarry.
The crusher, which operated between 2010 and 2016, produces too much noise and carcinogenic dust for the state to permit it, District 5 Environmental Commission members said in their June 14 order.
“No reasonable person should be subjected to the excessive amount of granite dust that the crushing operation generates,” commission members wrote. The sound from the crushers is loud enough that commissioners described it as “shocking and offensive.”
But residents who live nearby say authorities refuse to take action against another unpermitted rock crusher that began running in the quarry only months after the Supreme Court ruled that the first one would need a permit.
Attorneys for the neighbors say the new rock crusher is likely violating the law. Both operations are run by Northeast Materials Group, a local company.
It’s a bitter pill for residents here who recently won a five-year legal battle that went all the way to the Vermont Supreme Court — twice. The court in the end ruled that Northeast Materials must have a permit to operate a crusher on the site.
Snelling has told Graniteville residents she doesn’t know if the board can enforce the law against the new crusher. She hopes a resolution to the dispute would allow the company to crush rock on the property, farther from residents.
“I think the decision has to be based on, how do we put some balance back in this without it all being in court,” Snelling said. The rock crusher as it is currently being operated “isn’t getting us closer” to that balance, she said.
Balance, she said, means the business should remain profitable. “Economic development is ongoing — it’s a critical part of who we are,” she said. “We have to have jobs, and we have to prosper.”
Northeast Materials Group sells crushed granite for industrial and commercial purposes.
Snelling suggested residents seek a jurisdictional opinion from the District 5 Environmental Commission.
Neighbors say they embarked upon years of litigation the last time they sought a jurisdictional opinion on a virtually identical question and that it’s the board’s turn to act.
“It doesn’t matter what we go through, or what we get decided in our favor, nothing ever changes,” said Graniteville resident Lori Bernier. “I think the state of Vermont is expecting us to shoulder a lot. It’s time for them to take action and step up and enforce, and do their job.”
Residents say the Supreme Court’s ruling that the first crusher needed a permit should make it clear that a second crusher, located only 3,000 feet from the first, does too.
“I don’t know why they feel they can do this,” said Suzanne Smith, a writer who moved to Graniteville 28 years ago to live near the historic Rock of Ages quarry. “I’m disappointed in the state of Vermont for not enforcing this. It makes me feel helpless, because I have no control over my life, and I have no say over what happens in my community.”
Smith said the crushers sound like locomotives, and they’re loud enough to hear clearly throughout her house when they’re operating. The Rock of Ages quarry emitted the sounds of explosions, jackhammers and other typical mining machinery until five years ago, Smith said, when the quarry’s owners granted a lease to Northeast Materials Group.
The company has been crushing rocks in the quarry ever since, she said. The outcome of the legal fight changed nothing, Smith said.
“They just moved it to another hillside,” she said. “I’d think that would be illegal, but Vermont hasn’t decided to enforce anything yet. I hope they do in the future.”
Issues with another operation
Northeast Materials Group installed an asphalt plant on the Rock of Ages property in 2013.
The firm did get the required Act 250 permit for the plant, but it violates the permit’s terms, the Vermont Supreme Court said in another ruling last month. The justices reiterated the environmental court’s earlier finding that the asphalt plant emits “pungent, eye-watering, and throat-stinging odors” that “permeate [neighbors’] properties in the summer time, and cause them to forgo outdoor recreation.”
The asphalt permit forbids Northeast Materials Group from emitting odors across the quarry’s property line.
The court found that the asphalt plant introduced new harms to the community and the environment that are not historically associated with the quarry.
But despite the Supreme Court’s insistence, repeated at least nine times in the May decision on the asphalt plant, that the Natural Resources Board has authority to act on a permit violation, Snelling says the board doesn’t have jurisdiction.
Agency of Natural Resources officials say they can’t enforce the conditions of an Act 250 permit.
Natural Resources Board general counsel Greg Boulbol said it’s not clear that the asphalt plant is actually violating its permit, or that the Supreme Court said it was.
“I think they said there could be a violation, and it would be up to NRB to bring enforcement action” if there were a violation, Boulbol said.
Boulbol said the Natural Resources Board has already “looked into” the question of odors the asphalt plant emits, though not recently.
“If there are future complaints, we’ll take it up as it comes in,” he said.
Revisiting history
Boulbol said the board is investigating whether it has jurisdiction over the new crusher.
The crushing operation may be “grandfathered in” if crushing took place at the Rock of Ages site before Act 250 took effect in 1970. That was the claim made by Northeast Materials Group, until the Supreme Court ruled the crusher is not exempt from Act 250.
Snelling said the grandfathering question remains unresolved as it relates to the second crusher.
“It’s really not evident yet what the ultimate determination is, whether Act 250 has jurisdiction over that location or not,” she said.
If a grandfathered activity ceases for more than 20 years, that’s usually enough time to safely say the activity’s been abandoned, said Vermont Law School staff attorney Elizabeth Tisher, who is among the law school staff and students who have helped the neighbors with their case.
“The evidence of crushing on the site of NEMG’s second crusher is sparse,” Tisher said later in an email. “At [the] very least, any crushing that may have occurred on the site prior to 1970 appears to have been abandoned.”
Neither Rock of Ages nor Northeast Materials Group is likely to have any additional evidence of crushing at the site of the second rock crusher, Tisher said, because if they did, they’d already have presented it at trial.
Bernier, the neighbor, said the District 5 Environmental Commission’s decision to deny a permit for the first rock crusher had no impact, since the company simply started up at a different spot.
“We’ve gotten rulings in our favor many times, but nothing changes,” she said. “The group’s getting pretty discouraged.”
Until the first rock crusher fired up five years ago, the quarry crushed its rock almost exclusively on another piece of property outside town, Bernier said.
“People want their peace, they want the quality of life they had seven years ago, five years ago, before Northeast Materials Group moved in. We were enjoying our properties, and there was no complaint,” she said.
Since that time, as the smell and noise and dust have worsened, Bernier said, it has appeared regulators refuse to enforce the state’s own environmental laws and wish to place the enforcement burden on ordinary Vermonters.
Rock of Ages is owned by a Canadian mining firm called Polycor. Neither Rock of Ages, nor Polycor, nor Northeast Materials Group returned calls for this story.
