EDDINGTON, Maine — More than a year of work by planners to create new rules for future mineral extraction operations in town will go before voters at 6:30 p.m. Thursday during a special town meeting at Eddington Elementary School.
Although residents upset with a proposed ledge quarry project on Fox Hill started the citizens petition to support last year’s moratorium, which gave town leaders time to craft the new regulations, “this isn’t a rock quarry ordinance,” planner Gretchen Heldmann said Wednesday.
“This is a mineral extraction addendum to the Zoning Ordinance, and it applies to many different types of mineral extraction activities — rock, gravel, sand, topsoil, peat, etc.,” she said in an email interview. “This addendum was compiled from many other ordinances from across the state.”
Town planners reviewed mineral extraction rules in Hancock, Bucksport, Mount Desert and others and “incorporate[d] public input from a variety of interested parties” when creating the rules that voters will consider.
“The addendum sets performance standards for mineral extraction activities,” Heldmann said. “The performance standards relate to noise, dust, stormwater, blasting, groundwater, wildlife habitat, reclamation, setbacks and more.”
Project manager Janet Hughes of Hughes Bros. Inc., who has expressed concerns about portions of the draft’s regulations, wants residents to reject the new rules.
“The planning board has worked hard over the last year to develop good and sound environmental requirements. They are tough but doable, at least for the larger business entities,” she said. “However, at literally the last hour out of a year’s work and after public hearings … they have implemented setbacks that are 15 times the state’s regulations and five times greater than almost all municipalities in Maine.”
If residents vote down the measure, it will “tell the planning board to go back and rewrite the ordinance” to make it fair for residents, businesses and the environment.
“The planning board feels that they do not need science to implement setbacks, and we disagree,” Hughes said. “We believe you need science and logic, and their actions have cut out the potential for gravel pits and quarries to exist and/or expand in the town.”
In addition to the proposed mineral extraction addendum, residents also will vote on an amended zoning ordinance which has a few proposed changes related to public hearings on applications and the new mineral extraction rules, she said.
Changing the phrase “shall hold a public hearing” to “may hold a public hearing” is one of the proposed changes, as well as updating the application review timelines, and adding definitions for new terms found in the mineral extraction addendum, the planner said.
Hampden-based earthwork contractor Hughes Bros. first application, for a 10-acre quarry, was denied by the Eddington Planning Board after a two-hour review in October 2013. The company’s most recent application, which seeks a quarry between 5 and 20 acres, was put on hold last April when the first of two 180-day moratoriums was put into place.
Ralph McLeod of Holden, whose son and family live on Fox Hill, said he’ll be happy if the rules are put into place.
“The full town meeting on April 2 should be the deciding vote [to] finally afford some protection to residents and homeowners in Eddington,” said McLeod, who is on the Holden Town Council.