ADEQ requiring Legacy to submit a do-over on Public Notice

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The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality has notified Legacy Mining Co. that its June 14 public notices regarding Notifications of Intent to Quarry at a 600-acre site off Rockhouse Road near the Kings River were not compliant with the Quarry Act’s Chapter 57 section for Public Notice. ADEQ will notify the company associated with the investment group Sixty West that it must start over and correct errors and omissions.        

The ADEQ action occurred just one day after a large number of residents sent emails and made calls to ADEQ expressing concerns about the proposed quarry operation. Monday, June 29, was the deadline for property owners within a half mile of the quarry operation to respond to the original public notices published June 14 in the Carroll County News, which gave residents only 10 days to respond to the notice that has now been deemed faulty. Mining laws in Arkansas don’t require any other notification of neighboring property owners.

Chris Fischer, who lives on Rockhouse Road and has been actively communicating with ADEQ regarding the activities at the site where exploratory drilling is being conducted, said he was informed by Jerry Neill, who heads up the agency’s mining division, that Legacy Mining will have to start over with public notifications. Fischer said that’s good news to people concerned about how their wells, local springs and Keels Creek, Winona Creek and the Kings River could be damaged irreparably by quarry operations.

Exploratory drilling for rock mining is being conducted at the Legacy site off Rockhouse Road. Residents have been concerned about how the drilling activities, and potentially a new quarry at the mountainous site, could impact surface water from storm water runoff, and subsurface resources such as springs, disappearing springs, caves, sinkholes and water wells in the karst area that is underlaid by a maze of rocks and caverns.

Opponents said Legacy public notices failed comply fully with Act 1166, the Arkansas Quarry Operation, Reclamation, and Safe Closure Act in several ways including not having the correct address for the site and stating that the site was located near “the city of Beaver.” Another quarry owned by Legacy Mining is Ozark Southern Stone, which is located in Elk Ranch near Beaver.

Opponents of the Rockhouse Road drilling said state laws fail to take into account the vulnerability of water resources in karst terrain where activities carried out at one site have been known to degrade water quality and reduce water availability miles from that site.

Neighboring property owners who are concerned include Alece Carrigan and Gary Milczarek, who live across the road from the proposed quarry operation.

“Our well goes more than 1,000 feet down into the aquifer to supply our water,” the couple said in a letter to ADEQ. “The USGS document, The Potential Environmental Impacts of Quarrying Stone in Karst, documents the many sources of damage to water quality that happen from quarry operations in karst geology.”

The report said potential negative impacts include damaging groundwater sources, sinkhole collapse, water quality issues, increased velocity of ground water, drilling, blasting, loading and removal of vegetation.

“It seems your department is responsible for protecting the water quality we depend on, and that based on the evidence presented in this report, this quarry operation would almost certainly destroy that water quality,” the couple said.

Justice of the Peace Marty Johnson, who represents residents in the area on the Carroll County Quorum Court, will hold a public meeting on the Legacy Mining/Sixty West activities on Friday, July 12 from 1-3 p.m. at the Carroll Electric Cooperative Corp. community meeting room in Berryville.

Fischer said ADEQ has indicated it will send a representative to the meeting and Legacy Mining representatives are being invited. Fischer said it is expected that ADEQ will respond to citizens’ requests for a public meeting after the public notice is re-advertised, the property correctly identified and other errors corrected.