Thank you. I'm sorry. to all of the parties involved in this particular hearing that I was unable to be here on your first meeting I just something that happened in my family that I had to miss and I normally don't like missing these meetings and try not to and I want to apologize to all of you who are involved in this I know how important it is to both sides and I do apologize for not being here I want to ask again that this is a continuation of the Vulcan construction materials appeals we want to ask those people who have not been sworn in if you are speaking today on the opposition side because the Vulcan side has already had their day in court if you would stand those that who have already taken the oath I don't think there's any reason for you to stand again those who help would do if you would stand and we'd ask you to raise your right hand and if you can't stand you can sit oh do you swear to tell the truth and hold truth and nothing but the truth thank you those of you who have cell phones on your person You would ask that you put them on off. If you don't mind, if you have to make a call, you would mind that you would step outside and do your dues out there. We do not want to be interrupted by a cell phone ringing or any conversations on the phone from this end. Now, I have educated myself as well as I can and could. I've seen tapes. I've seen the scripts of the meeting. I've gone through it twice. I've read everything that's been submitted on behalf of the mine and also on behalf of those who are objecting to this appeal. And I feel that I am probably as up to date as I probably can be, other than the fact that I was not here. When we left this meeting, or when you all left the meeting, The Vulcan mine had ended their presentation and we were through the objectors through Miss Jessica Brown, if I'm not mistaken. And when we start this session, we will start on the objector side and we will listen to Mr. Todd as to how you want to arrange that. And before we do that, I want you to understand that I, as the chair, have the option to stop you if we hear things that have already been heard. We do not want to hear any repetitive objections relative to this particular case. So I will remind you that that we've been through this from what I've heard on the tapes and any of the board members that Wish to chime in relative to what they heard that I may not have that you are repeating We would ask that you do that we want to keep this as fair and equitable as possible with everybody having their opportunity to speak and Then we will allow Vulcan to rebuttal before we start I'll ask the staff if you have any comments or questions just have two additional letters to turn in for the record all right any of the board members have any comments or questions mr. Todd we will we will ask that you I think you have someone here who only on your side that is in opposition that would like to speak first because she has to leave so if you would honor that for her after he finishes ma'am we will let you come for us yes that'd be fine but right after you tell us okay thank you mr. chairman and we have taken a great consideration towards your comments and have endeavored to even streamline and or reorganize and expedite the process for you but as a cautionary note this is an issue that has been fermenting for 30, 40 years and it's difficult to condense it into a short presentation particularly because it's affected the lives of many people for that time frame. Understanding that as a background to the circumstances here, I would ask your leniency in terms of the time frame and we will endeavor not to be repetitive. Okay? All right. Let me begin by giving to you information that we are hopeful will help you and assist you to reach a resolution. Each one of you has in front of you a booklet and the tab numbers are consistent with a sheet indicating exhibits and these are the areas that we intend to address. And you can follow along with the speakers. The speakers obviously will not discuss each and every item that's mentioned in the book. They're going to touch on the highlights. But that's there as a resource for you. we want to introduce a copy of that in the record as an exhibit. In addition to introducing this as an exhibit, we would ask that all prior correspondence that was mailed from people who are not in the notification area from across the city, which we've not received a copy of, also be retained in the record as an exhibit. And I believe that Madam Clerk here has all those. in addition we have a copy of the rural land management plan that we've obtained and we want to give each one of you a copy of this as well Knox if you'd just pass that out to the commission members and you can utilize this both now and in the future if need be it's a great resource and it contains the legislative acts of the city pertaining to the area of the rural land management plan. Okay. We want to make sure, obviously, that this is being videotaped or recorded as was the previous meeting for purposes of record preservation, and I'm told that that's the case. As Mr. Chairman indicated, we have progressed through about a third of the presentation. And if I may take a moment just to introduce and refresh your memory, I'm not going to talk about each topic, but as you may recall, we talked about our neighborhood request for discovery of information, public disclosure. And Mary Hanna, stand up please. Do you remember she spoke initially and asked and told you about our attempts to recover information? Lori Lawrence talked to you about the – she's a professor at the university, and I'm glad that she's here again today. She talked to you about the timeline with Richmond Road and how their historical relationship developed and the issues that were there. Lori, would you stand? Okay. Okay. Jessica Brown talked with you briefly about the historic features of the neighborhood, the PDR program, how many pieces of property on the national registry that are directly in the notification area and are directly affected by this. Jessica, would you stand? Okay. Those were our principal speakers. I think Wynne Meeker also spoke. Wynne, were you the last speaker? Jessica was. Jessica was? Okay. Wynne, just stand up and say hello so they'll remember you. Okay, those were our speakers up to this point. All right. So we now, taking the recommendations of one of the members and reading a recent article in the Pension Bar, we've decided to present to you the legal issues in this case first, summarizing the questions that we think are pertinent, discussing the ordinance, and we want to encourage you to ask questions during the process. We think if we just speak for several hours or so that it may interrupt the flow. Now, that doesn't interfere with your procedural arrangements. We have no problems answering questions as we go through the process if you feel it's appropriate. Okay? I've given you a copy of our table of contents, and we intend to follow along with that. Gloria Martin is going to speak first about the mining ordinance, the historical background, why it was developed, how it was developed, what was the purpose behind it, and ultimately how it plays a significant role in your decision in this case. Gloria? Do you want – I think she had requested to speak first. We'll do the floor. Yeah, okay, thank you. And this is Ms. Wendy Trimble, I understand. Yeah. So if you would give your name so we can have that part of the record and we will hear you. My name is Wendy Trimble. I live at 825 Walnut Hill Road, which is right off the Old Richmond Road. I'm a mother, a cyclist, a business owner, and a local resident, and I oppose the expansion of Vulcan Minerals, mostly because of the gravel trucks. I have had to call the hauling company more than once for being run off the road by gravel trucks cycling to and from my business along Old Richmond Road. Old Richmond Road is a very important cycling way. I handed Mr. Stout the Kentucky State bicycling routes, and Old Richmond Road is part of that. I also have copies of that But then I was so they can put it up on the screen from the Lexington Fayette County Metropolitan district bike ped master plan and it shows that Old Richmond Road is a very important corridor and a commuting route between Lexington and Richmond as well as a scenic road it is also one of the only places that you have to cross you have to go on Old Richmond Road in order to cross and cycle on many of the beautiful cycling routes that we have in the area the rural bike routes that are included there so I think it's inevitable that that both the gravel trucks and the cyclists meet and they go really way too fast to be able to, with the blind spots, to be able to stop for cyclists. It's also where I pull out from Walnut Hill onto Old Richmond Road is a very dangerous intersection. There's been at least one gravel truck flipped over right at that intersection and they're going extremely too fast over a blind hill for when you have to pull out in my car with my kids in the car and be able to get safely onto Old Richmond Road. So I oppose the expansion because I worry about the – mostly because I worry about the cyclists and the gravel tracks interfacing in that region. I'm also on the Mayor's Bike Task Force. I've been the chair for a couple years, so I'm very familiar with that area. My business is we have a bicycling shop on Richmond Road. So it's in that area and there are lots of cyclists along Old Richmond Road. So I think it's a very important corridor for cyclists and for the community to maintain for cycling. Do you have any questions? Anyone have questions, Board? Thank you. I'm Gloria Martin and I live at 7416 Grimes Mill Road which is within the notification area, part of my farm is, to this particular request. I've been asked to come to explain to you all first to sort of set the stage on how and why we all got here today. And as you all know it started back in 88 and 89. I'm not going to go into that. It was a contentious time for everybody involved. I was on the board and that is part of the reason that Mayor, then Mayor, Scotty Basler asked me following those hearings to please chair a committee to review this. It was appointed through the council. Don Todd was the 12th district representative on the council at that time. And the mayor appointed a very broad based, very diverse group of folks to serve on that committee. People from Vulcan Materials, one of which came several times from Knoxville. The plant manager, somebody from the Kentucky Crust Stone Association. There were people from UK, geology department, engineering, many representatives within house in local government. Somebody from law, somebody from building inspection, somebody from planning. People from planning commission, it was, and some citizens. So it was a very broad-based committee, well over a dozen people. They met on a regular basis, and I must say, at least every week, and sometimes the subcommittees more than that, for over a two-year period of time. I will also say that it was a very congenial group, very well-mannered. We agreed from the beginning to disagree on some issues, but we compromised. We worked it out. And actually everybody left the committee in good spirits and in a friendly atmosphere through the whole thing. So it was not a contentious committee. That's very important to note because at the end of that little more than two-year time period, the committee came away with a 100% backed, 100% every committee member who'd been appointed, came with this ordinance, came with the recommendation and the backing of everyone on the committee. Went to the council with everybody and the backing of the council and the mayor on the committee. That's a lot to be said because during that time period, it involved a lot of public involvement. Everybody who had complaints or who had the least bit of interest, one way or the other, They were allowed to come to the meetings. They were open to the public. Everyone sort of in that two years had their say. So the fact that the ordinance came with 100% support and was adopted with a lot of support means a whole lot, and I think everybody needs to understand that up front. The ordinance itself, the ordinance, not only did everybody have their say, but people from all over, not just Kentucky. We had people come from Indiana and Tennessee, quote, experts, and they really were. They were people with PhDs and who specialized in their particular field. They came in geology and hydrology, although I felt like we had some real experts on our own committee. We had Dr. John Kiefer from the geology from the Kentucky Geological Survey. We had people who did the same thing from the state in the water quality. So the committee itself had a lot of very smart experts. But these people all came, and we also, from around the country, were given some ordinances that had already been done to review, to not boilerplate anything, but to make sure that it was specific to our situation and specific to Fayette County. I think that's an important part because during that 20-year time period, some things have changed. Many of the original people who were involved in that have changed. As the people sitting behind these chairs can tell you, most, I think the majority, if not all, of the division directors and heads as administrations changed, as people retired, as they got better jobs, the same people are not in those head and director positions. The mine managers, people overseeing the mines in Fayette County, have changed. Signatures on the trail of signatures on all these documents, and you'll see some of those, have all changed. There are some members who are still around. But I think I'd be remiss if I didn't mention it this time because they were very significant in the drafting of this were our fellow Board of Adjustment members. Chairman Bill Bagby and Bill Matlack and Coach Roach and Gus Moran, who all sat on the board at that time and all participated, have gone on to what I think are probably better rewards. But they were helpful, and you all know how much time and effort it takes to do what you do, and I think everybody appreciates that. Some of the same neighbors are still here. Some of them you will hear from today. One of those is an engineer, Bill Brown, who knows a lot about engineering, so I'm not going to touch on any of that. He will. He lives in the area. He was on that original committee, and he will talk to you today. As I've already said, Don Todd was the councilperson at that time. Mr. Hopgood was here and still here. and, as you all know, the mine is still here. And the significant thing that I would ask everybody to understand today is that ordinance adopted in 1991, December of 1991, is still the law. It is still in place. It has not changed. And it is still the reason we're here, because that is the law that is governing all mining and coring in this county. Remember that it has not changed. I hope that you all have been able to read those minutes from 88 and 89. As I said, I'm not going to go back over that again. And more importantly, I hope that you've had a chance to actually read the mining ordinance. I want to say, too, that when we first started doing this, when the mayor first said, go do this, we went to the state. We felt that was probably the best place to start. We got sort of a surprising reaction there because they said, you need to go home and write your own law on this. We mainly take care of coal mining. We don't do much in limestone mining, and if you do that, you will come near having some oversight. They also recommended that we interlock this ordinance with planning and our zoning ordinance for very specific reasons for checks and balances. That was done and that's why you see this because they explained to us they only had I think at the time a half a dozen inspectors and they would prefer that we did it this way. So we did. I do want to say that this is a big financial issue for everybody. It was at the time. Excuse me. I need my clean air. allergies bother me at that at that time we realized that it was a big financial issue for everyone involved if you have looked at and I know you have if you will just open those tabs to page one again to the notification area and if If you will look to this page which was the notification page that they when they made the request they filled in, gave for the notification to everybody. I actually did this. I didn't do this page, of course. This is what planning sends out the letters for. And I guess I've always said, having been raised by a schoolteacher mother and two schoolteacher grandmothers, I was severely potty trained. So I took this list and actually went down through it for financial reasons. Went to the PVA office. The list that you have here, the majority, and I do mean the majority, of the names on this list are the green on that map that you got. And not only that, but they have a big financial interest in this hearing today legally. The quarry on this list, the properties evaluated, is assessed for $500,000. And I actually added up all the rest of the properties on here. I took out the quarry, I took out the Hidden Haven properties, and of course things like Raven Run and the fire station and Kentucky American Water, they're not assessed at anything. The rest of these properties, just within the notification area, are almost $1 million. So that represents a serious financial interest here today. having said that I was also asked to participate because I come here with kind of a unique perspective and that is I did serve for 10 years on the Board of Adjustment and I did chair the mining ordinance and I did go on to serve 11 years on the council and I'm a property owner within the notification area and within the thousand foot mark and beyond Now, having said those things, having set the stage, I'll get to the point of exactly why this request should be denied. Because it cannot legally be granted. And I'd like to tell you why the operation at 7430 Elk Lake Falls Road is operating without a legal permit right now. And why they can't ask for the expansion because they themselves, the primary source, need to do some more work. Now, I'm not going to be, and the people who are speaking to you today, are not going to be giving you a lot of technical information about geology or hydrology or that sort of thing. We're mainly going to be talking to you about the necessary things that to this case directly, legally. And the real issue is the legality of what's going on at the existing operation based strictly on the mining ordinance and the zoning ordinance. And remember I said they dovetail tightly together by state request. Before Bill Brown comes and gives you the real nuts and bolts of the ordinance itself, I'm going to do just a bit of housekeeping for you that is necessary to see how those nuts and bolts work. If you will turn to tab four, exhibit four in your book, which says the process for obtaining a mining quarrying permit per the ordinance and the zoning ordinance. It's a pretty simple thing. It's about four steps here. One, two, three, four. Four steps for the applicant. Now, the ordinance goes into detail, so where it says specifics, you can look in the ordinance, and it spells it out for you. One, two, three, four, five. But basically, the applicant comes in and goes to building inspection, and his application has to have all of those things you see there. And it's not an option. The ordinance says shall. It doesn't say go in here and maybe do part of this. The ordinance says no application is deemed valid until all the requirements are complete. Some things are simple. It's pretty easy to fill in your name. It's pretty easy to fill in the kind of mineral you're going to be. It's pretty easy to give you a vicinity map with the two-mile radius. It's not so easy to do what's required in that two-mile radius. You have all these other things. And when it says plan, it doesn't mean half a paragraph or two sentences. It means a plan. Give the exact plan. Give the plan for reclamation. give the plan for transportation, give the plan that engineering can rely on. So you go down through all of this, and after they've done that, and building inspection sees that it is a complete ordinance, complete application based on the ordinance, if all the requirements are met, including the written confirmation that they have adequate bonding, then they send it on to planning to get that conditional use permit. which is supposed to come to you, the Board of Adjustment. And then the planning staff has to write the recommendations, just like it says in the zoning ordinance, based on what they have gotten from building inspection. Then it comes before you, the planning staff, the Board of Adjustment. Everybody finds that the application is complete. The board may deny it. They may approve it. They may add conditions. They're not allowed to waive the minimum standards, but they may add more conditions if they see fit. After that, it goes back to building inspection. Last thing down there under next. They get the permit. Building makes sure the bonding and everything is in place. But even then, the ordinance clearly says Building inspection may grant them a permit. It doesn't say shall. And you all know there's a big difference between may and shall. They still don't have to do it if they think something is not what it ought to be or if for some reason it's not as complete as they think. But let's say they do. Everything's perfect. They've gotten it. They've sent it to you. They've sent it to you. You've sent it back with approval. After all that is done, per the ordinance and per state law since October of 1988, all of those conditions, all of it, that's in that application, which is considered a condition, and anything you might add to it, goes over to the county clerk's office and is recorded in the land use books. That's the law. It's like five steps. But let me say that it's not up to building inspection, and it's not up to our planning staff to fill out that application or that information for them. That is not their job, jobs. They are to take the applications and review them after somebody else has done all the work. And the other important thing is the staff needs to be able to rely on the fact that the information they have been given is true and valid and accurate. When you fill out an application for something down here, there's a little thing at the bottom that says signature. That the information you have provided is true and accurate to the best of your knowledge. The staff relies on that. All staff members rely on that. I think that's a really important thing to note. The next thing, there's your application and what you have to do. The next thing I'd like to do is turn to Exhibit 3. It's not that we're going backwards, it's the way that people are going to be discussing some of this. Exhibit 3. I notice and we've noticed for a long time when your reports have come to you, in fact In the report that they gave the neighborhood on the CD, which is where I saw this, when the Neighborhood Association asked for the open records and the open records disc came for your hearing, they made some copies and asked me to review it. So I saw it again. In 1988 and 89, when they brought this forward, they talked about having vested rights. They had valid existing rights. Well, since planning and zoning started in Fayette County, always it has been clear that mining, quarrying, at that time we didn't have mines. It was open-face quarry, open pit quarry, which, by the way, the ordinance defines in detail every one of those at the state's request. You can have an open pit, which is just that, an open pit. You can have a quarry, which is by definition an open pit of sorts. You can have a mine, which is considered underground. And you can have a combination, a quarry and a mine, which might have started as an open pit and proceeded to a mine. So you can have a combination, but the definitions are clear. When they came in 1988 and 89, the application they filled in and the staff report said that the mining quarrying of non-metallic minerals in the agricultural zone was a permitted use with a conditional use permit. That's correct. As far as I know, that's been correct forever and ever and maybe as long as planning and zoning as men going on in Fayette County. There were some problems with that, obviously, in 88 and 89 because there weren't any kind of conditions on the books for anyone to follow. So what happened was when we had this committee, at everybody's agreement, the people involved in mining and quarrying, the neighbors, everybody decided that starting with the adoption of this ordinance to level the playing field so that everyone was protected. The mining operations were protected, the quarrying operations were protected, the neighbors were protected, and the government was protected. All parties, it was agreed, would start with a level playing field. When you read the ordinance, you will see that they very clearly defined existing rights. They very clearly defined vested rights and existing rights. As of December 12, 1991, those people who were already operating had the right to come in and fill out that application. And then they would go through that process and get their conditions. If a new mine wanted to open up the week after that or today or tomorrow. They came in, played by the same rules. So that, by ordinance, when you read it, is very clear. I don't know if, Bill, are you talking about application versus reapplication? Okay, I won't skip over that. The next thing I'm asked to do is do you want me to do the mine inspections now? Okay, if you will turn to tab 9. I happen to have had some of these that I'd kept and And the Neighborhood Association president actually came down and I guess somebody in building inspection gave her a couple of days ago some more of the inspections and copied the executive summaries. And thank you because I had not seen a few of those. I had kept all mine from five or six years in there, but I didn't have them all. So it's interesting to note when they sent these, and I did go through them all, just the executive summaries are, for this many years, are numerous pages. I don't know how many you copied for her, but the reports are very in size, depending on the engineering firm. Some do really well at it. Some look like boilerplate, which is, you know, standard. But some of these do go into detail. On the first page of the report, you'll see that from 1994 through 2010, six different independent engineering firms carried out inspections of these mines. One year it was not done. That was because in one year they had an emergency. see they had to go inspect one and there wasn't enough money to do it in the next time period. But periodically it has been done every year. You'll also notice in the right-hand column that just like the changing staff and just like the changing engineering inspecting firms that the mine operators and the people who are in charge at the mines change. You can see here they too have had a half a dozen folks. But regardless of, if you'll turn the page, regardless of which independent engineering firm conducted the inspection, so you can't say just one person looked at it and didn't really do it. The same items of noncompliance required in Section 8-7 under mapping in the ordinance, the same noncompliance issues are mentioned over and over and over. And you think when you look at some of those, when I first read the first one's well, it's not the fact that it's more extensive mining that's shown on the map this year. Well, you know, they turned in that map in June, and we're inspecting in July or October, so you'd expect them to be off a little bit. And the fact that there's only a foot deep water on level one, well, you expect there to be a little water. They've already told you that they take the surface water and put it in the mine. You don't always expect to see that they're discarding their concrete there, but I don't know if that matters or not. But if you go down through all those years, you notice that over and over there are no contour lines, there's no information available because it's inaccessible access, cannot enter because of safety. That's year after year until you get to 2000. Then they make a special note of it's been mining more than we thought and then they get down there and they say rooms advancing toward adjacent property lines. Now that's what got us to that mining ordinance in the first place. So it's a little bit of a red flag. And they didn't do any inspection in 2001. And in 2002, they'd advanced enough that it says they've encroached on the 100-foot barrier. Rooms advancing toward adjacent property boundaries, obviously even more. and then when you get down the next year, they have mined outside of the property boundary. Now I'll have to say that in the record, at least the ones that I still had from the days I was here, I will have to tell you that some time during these periods, building inspection did send notice of violations and did say correct it. There's some from Susan Umberger. There's some from Jim Hume. that say, you've got to go do this, this, and this. You know, here's the report. Meet it. All the things, as you can see, they didn't indicate the properties within 1,000 feet. They didn't indicate always who had the mineral lease. Then they indicated who had them, and then they didn't draw the property line. They didn't give them the plan for 12 months in advance. Over and over, water pools and streams on the surface not shown. That was another thing that got us in trouble to start with. The wells are not located. Years later, they started putting the little thing on the map, which I can show you, that says according to KGS, Kentucky Geological Society, they said, but Kentucky Geological Survey has never done a survey of that area. They can't tell you if there are wells there or not. I can tell you I have one. I rely on it on a piece of my property, and it's well within that. And it's, you know, there are some things that just didn't get properly checked out. If you keep on going, there are roof falls that they did not note. And then finally, I think it's really significant to note in 2007 on there, that on level two, which is the second level they had gone to, the water in part of the mine was 40 feet deep. Now, that wasn't a clerical error because they spelled out 40, F-O-R-T-Y, and then put in parentheses 40 as the number, so there was no misunderstanding. And then they noted also that same year that it was less than 50 feet from the adjoining property owner's boundary. The ordinance clearly states above ground, below ground, it talks about mine, which is below ground, that you must stay within 100 feet away from that property boundary. If you'll turn the page to where the ordinance I've actually copied and highlighted, it tells you they have to make a new map. And I didn't, by the way, I didn't list everything on this two pages I gave you. You could see these are just some things. But on that next page where it says what is required in the ordinance when you have an application and have a facility like this, that the maps have to do certain things. There are the pages, Section 8-7, mapping of your mining operations. That's every year. Make a new and updated mapping of the workings of the mine. And on the next page that you have, 24, it clearly states under J, the property or boundary lines of the mine, which is underground, indicating the 100-foot barrier, if applicable. It's only not applicable if you have the property next door. the same thing on the next page there's even a definition that talks about in the buffer section but on the next page it says they kept doing that and they kept putting building inspection in a bit of a bind as well because building inspection only gets the amount of money that they say they're going to disturb that much land every year and then they only get $6 per acre of disturbed land and $12 in another situation. So they're not getting a whole lot of money to have these independent outside inspectors come do this. I'm sure it's very difficult for that amount of money to get these people to even come do this. But it does say that if they're not happy about it, then they can hire somebody to go do it, and then they can make the mine or the operator, the money is recovered for doing that. Now, just some of the pages. Quickly, we're going to thumb through in a hurry. Next page is from the report that shows you it's more extensive than shown. Next page says there's a disparity between the maps. The next page tells you the quarry is encroached on the mineral property boundary with the Commonwealth of Kentucky in two different locations. The next page is a memo from me written in 2002 about the mine inspections. And this is important for you to note because when I wrote this, I said, you know, I served on the Board of Adjustment, and I became obvious during that time and during the case that they mined off their property onto neighboring properties where they didn't have mineral leases, and it created some problems. And could you please do the following for me? I've been getting lots of complaints. could you look into this and look at the original you know I know there have been three facilities inspected annually for the past five years I guess you know have they who did the inspections what is it costing us well actually in pretty quick order within within a week if you'll notice on the next page Kurt Farley who was the acting director that time of building inspection, wrote me back and said, well, there are three facilities. We have the three facilities. My question, have the three facilities been inspected annually for the past five years? And he said, well, we do have three facilities. And we did the one at Elk Lick, and we did Central. But the Georgetown facility has been closed or abandoned since 1999. Now, if you've read that ordinance, you already know. if you close or abandon a facility, there's some real bonding reclamation hoops you've got to jump through for that. So there are no inspection reports for that one. He told me who'd been making them, and you'll see at the bottom how much money it costs. Now, he also wrote on the next page that the fees don't quite cover it because they've gotten to be more involved in the inspections of what needed to be looked at. So I'm going to tell you on these inspections what the consulting independent engineers open their reports by saying, and that is we've been hired to go look at the mine. Our main objective is not all the things under mapping here. our main objective is to go make sure take a few spot points they're not going to resurvey that's an expensive time-consuming thing to do that they're not going to be able to do for the sixteen hundred and twenty four dollars you saw they're going to go and do some spot checks just to make sure that these people are in fact on their property those are what you saw on those first pages that said they're getting a little close they're advancing a little fast Now they're within that 100-foot boundary. Now they're off their property. So they are there. That's mainly what they were to do. And if you'll turn to the next page, this is a section copied from the 2002 map, which is the map I happen to have that building inspection sent me after that inspection. and I've kind of marked on it north, which is down on the bottom of your page, east, south, west. This is level two. Now level two, and they told you this the other day, they didn't go to level two until the early to mid-90s. So it was after the mining ordinance. That was after they left level one at this site that caused the problems. And here's the map. the red I put on there because it was the maps in color. And if you look in the next page, the report of the inspector, this is just one of the pages that came out of the fellow's book that year, 2002. He said, you know, there's a possible encroachment of the adjoining property that has possibly occurred even since the last visit where they had reported it before, that Mr. Fred Buckner, who was, and I have to say I don't know Mr. Buckner, who was the local manager at the time, and you saw from that first page they had numerous managers go through there. He had taken over in October, and it says because of the minor encroachment, he implemented a new 50-foot barrier policy for the quarries to prevent this from happening in the future. Well, he can implement whatever he wants for an in-house policy, but the ordinance plainly says stay a hundred feet away. And if you'll go back to this map, one page back, the property line, I don't know, you might want to, I don't know if this will show or not, but around the border it shows you the property lines and then you see kind of that gray line. Let's see. How do you work your pointer? There's the property line and you see that little gray line in there? That's his 50 foot and that dark line there inside is my 100 foot. So not only were they completely over the 100 foot, they were already you know to the property line this was before he pointed this out to them on the next page is one of those summary checklists the quarries kind of go through and I don't know with building inspection Jim I don't know if you all devise this or if the mining inspectors do it themselves just by looking at the ordinance, I guess? I think that's something they've developed over the years. Okay. Because it's pretty early on. You see the same kind of thing, and they obviously go down through the ordinance. And since they're not required to look at a whole lot of things, they kind of look at the things they think they can for that amount of money. And they check yes, no, yes, no. And I just wanted you to see those that on every single year since about 94, there are things that are not in line. You know, they didn't indicate the surface features. They didn't tell you about any wells. They didn't tell you if they had any underground impoundments. Now, that's important because in the ordinance, it tells you if you're going to keep any water in the mine, you go to engineering. and engineering has to approve water impoundments up front before you do it. And not all of the ownership information was provided. If you go to the next page, that's what I said to you is in here. It tells you what a buffer is. And then it tells you on the next page, section 8.6, about staying 100 feet away. and then it tells you on the next page yet again about the boundary lines 100 feet away. And then the next page tells you about some of the subsequent actions. And then here was a letter that the staff had received when they had sent one of these notices to the mine's engineer. here's his reply back and this was after the person that he said agreed to it was gone but at any rate his office had addressed this business of the contour lines what they kept saying is you know the bottom of the mind's flat so we don't really need to do the contour lines we're just going to do some spot checks blah blah blah that that's accepted in the business that's an accepted practice and that's what we're going to do well i don't know about accepted practice. But I do know that everybody who sat down and worked on this ordinance, that's what they came up with. That's what they want. That's what they thought needed to be done. I also will enter into the record here, the Vulcan mines around the country, all of their quarrying operations. The neighbors told you the other day in their introduction how they had 300 and something mines around the country in 22 states and foreign countries or whatever and I want to show you that out of all their mines the green the green ones are the only ones that are underground mines. So they don't deal with that a whole lot I guess in a whole lot of places. But he writes back and says we you know we kind of have an understanding with building inspection and this is the way we're going to do it. And I'm going to tell you that you don't agree to change the ordinance by just an agreement. If you want to change an ordinance, you go through the procedure. You go through building inspection and planning and it gets introduced and it gets hashed out in planning committees and it goes before council and it's a rigmarole. So you don't just arbitrarily on your own change it. I think that the next page that you have sort of summarizes that. This was from the year 2007. When the summary of this particular person, who independent outside mining engineer looked at this, noted, you know, their entire area is flooded with water to a depth of 40 feet. And all those other people have already been telling you, we can't look at part of this mine, we can't get there because it's not accessible. quote, in their reports for safety reasons. Now, I don't know what the safety reasons were, but I know that they didn't feel good about doing it. They tell you over and over the mining extractions are less than 50 feet from the property boundary. We don't think they're in compliance with Article 8.7. The drawings they submitted don't adequately depict the mineral leaseholders within 1,000 feet. There's still no contour lines. and then they say on the next page that I have a star beside since mining operations in the near future will continue to encroach upon the permit property boundary as the mine levels are fully developed clarification of the true buffer zone width a hundred or fifty foot buffer is needed and the true value must be clarified with Vulcan Now, it's pretty clear to me, if you read the ordinance, you understand it. You know what the buffer is in about half a dozen different places. Now if you will open the map that I have for you. The first one should be the one that has the big blue splotches on it. Now I'm not a mining engineer. I don't pretend to be a mining engineer. I just pretend to have chaired this ordinance and spent two years of my life dealing with it. But you can see this is just part of it that's been copied. And here, and this is what a lot of them do look like. Some of the ones I have are colored and some of them I don't know if they all come to you in color or not. just black and white that I received. But you can see on the left of that map toward the spiral part, this is level one. You're looking at level one. This is what the case was about in 1989. This is part of why the ordinance was written. Everything on the left that you see there, that tan that's how far out of their boundaries they were from that dark line. If you look on the right of the map and that's on the Homer Turner property on the left if you look on the right of that and you see where that was the Mary Wharton Nature Sanctuary on that side and you can clearly see that there are one, two, three, five areas with a lot of water and you'll also look if you look closely that's why I need reading glasses. Some of those are 20 feet and some of them are in excess of 20 feet deep and I can tell you that on these maps an inch equals 200 feet so you're talking about you know a thousand feet times 250 feet wide we're talking about a lot of water. If you turn to the next map. This is level two. This is the one they told you the other day they didn't go to until early 90s and the first time that it's mentioned in the reports actually verifies that. And this is level two and it's the same thing. The top of your map is east. This would be the line that you can see they've encroached across onto the Commonwealth of Kentucky property. The left is Bird Hill Lane. You can see there it says Hidden Haven now. On the right is Mary Wharton's Nature Sanctuary and I will point out that that green line around there is the green line they put on there themselves. that's what they say, okay there's the 50-foot buffer. We shouldn't get within the 50-foot buffer which is really a hundred foot buffer and as you can well see, they didn't pay attention to their own green line. The other thing I want you to notice is on the left-hand side toward the upper left-hand corner, all of that area that is cross-hatched with the blue, blue cross-hatching, the legend that is on this map tells you that that is water. And that is what that last page you looked at from 2007, that's what that inspector told you is the water is flooded, told you that there were depths of 40 feet. They also tell you they don't go to level one because there's no mining going on in level one so they don't really inspect level one very much. For the most part most of those reports say well they're not using level one except for transportation or for storage. Every now and then they'll say well they've opened up a little area and they are mining or doing this and that on level one but for the most part it's been going on on level two. Now here's a letter that went back to that engineer after all these letters saying well I'm still I'm still concerned about the buffer and I'm still concerned about the contour lines and and so here's the letter they get back the letter that which is in our records and it's something that they gave that building inspection gave to us it's not any clandestine thing they actually said well I think the buffer return they were referring to pertains to the surface buffer not the mining level well it's obvious that they were closer than 100 feet in the mining as well and that we're going to waive those contour lines for the one that everybody thinks maybe is better which is kind of a moot point and then we do have a map in our office with that thousand feet that they've given us it's on file well there's a reason that it's in the map and not on file we went through this was in great length in this hearings because a lot of these mining engineers who worked on this and had extensive dealings in coal mining and they brought that knowledge as did the geologist and the hydrologist to the table saying this is what you want to do and this is why. And if you'll turn to the next page, this is the current map that they're operating on. This is the 2009 dated 2009 but given to Jim or whomever as their 2010 map is really 2009. It's what's dated on the bottom of what they had. And you can see there's the hundred foot buffer and there's the 50 foot buffer and you can see in how many places they are to the property line and how close they are outside of the buffer. Are you talking about the current permit? Okay. Well the next thing then is what you got. It's on tab 10, the current permit. if Bill's going to talk about it I'm not we're not going to repeat anything I didn't know exactly what he was what all he was covering but I will ask you to go to tab 15 Now some levels of these operations are a little more strict and they're a little more, some people might say, oh well, looking at the contour lines that might be nitpicking. Well, it may be nitpicking but the law is the law and it does say shell and it doesn't say may. The federal folks look at it a little differently. They record online. Anybody can go look up any mine, anywhere, coal mine, copper mine, it's all there under the Mine Health Safety Administration. And they list for at least 10 years citations that people have been given. I pulled these up because we were just, something that was said I knew was not quite accurate. And some citations, of course, are more relevant than others. Some of these are just for dust, or some are for various and sundry little infractions. But the point is, this mine has been issued citations over the years. Just in the past five years, when you look at this, and obviously it came straight from MSHA, they keep records of those citations and the amount of the penalties issued to each and every mine in the U.S. And their records indicate that in the past five years, just 2006 through 2010, that they have issued 59 104A citations to this operation. And it's not a whole lot of money. It's a little bit less than 18,000, but they still had penalties. And in the five years before that, 2000 through 2005, they issued 53 others for another 10,299, the point being that in 10 years they have been given citations. Somebody does look at the health and the safety of the operation and the employees. So collectively, over those 10 years, they were given $27,942 worth of penalties for just that mine. And if you also look, they also tell you on that next page exactly how many workers have been reported at that mine. So they tell you how many were underground, how many were surface, how many were mill operators or in the preparation plant, or how many were office workers on site. And that is this mine. You can see at the top, it says, you know, Richmond Road, active mine, underground, Fayette County. Here's the mine ID number. I mean, there's no mistaking what you're looking at. And when you go down through that on the right-hand column, they've added it up for you. And in the past, they told you the other day that they were down because of the economy, that they didn't have very many people there. But as you can see by looking at this, in that time period, the most they have ever had working for them, above ground, below ground, in the office, was 20. So you just need to know that there are some things going on that need to be looked at. I just wanted to point out to you that they never did, never have since 1991, complete their requirements. They didn't go to the Board of Adjustment, you or any previously, for conditional use permit. It's not recorded in the courthouse, as by law, since 88, it's required to be. And that kind of shows, in my mind, a basic disregard for the LFUCG rules and regulations. It's kind of a brazen refusal to do what the neighbors had asked them to do and they had agreed to do. You can see that their mining practices are less than stellar. They have water. I forgot to point out to you there is a roof fall on one of those maps. That's the circle with the little X's in it. Not all the areas are accessible for safety or inspection. In the past, they did have gravel in Elk Lake Creek. They're not paying attention to the boundaries. They're not paying attention to the buffer area. And they certainly have ignored some of their neighbors, which you're going to hear about. I just want to say that nobody intended to go to all of that effort with all of those citizens and all of these city employees and people who volunteered their time from UK to do this so that it would be safe for the operation and the people who work there, so it would be safe for the neighbors and it would be easy for the employees. they apologized profusely in 89 for all the obvious reasons. And what bothers me is those apologies kind of stopped at the front door, and it's back to business as usual. And I would say that once you listen to these folks and hear the rest of the story, as the saying goes, that you tell them no until they can get their business in order and they come down here to building inspection and give them what they need so that they can actually be a conforming legal operation like was intended. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is William Brown, and I live at A23 McCall's Mill Road with my property just several hundred feet from the mining operation, meaning within the notification area, but right on the edge of the notification area. I'm an engineer, as it was alluded to before. I have an MBA, and basically spent my business career working for mining companies in an energy business. In that time, what I did was mostly planning and business development. In the planning side, I took care of basically capital expenditures at mining operations. That will come into play a little bit later. And on the business development side, I evaluated mines, both for purchase and evaluated our own operations, both from a mining perspective, a cost perspective, and a market viability perspective. For those reasons, that's one of the reasons I was appointed to the mining quarrying ordinance committee, the initial committee, and spent over two years developing the ordinance. What we wanted to do, and what Gloria has alluded to, is that we wanted to set a clear set of rules in place for mines to follow, mines and quarries to follow. The problem is that even though these are very straightforward and uncomplicated, Vulcan has failed to follow those rules and regulations pretty much from the beginning of time. And we're going to talk about that in a little more detail. Can I ask you a question before you go on, please? Sure. Did I understand you say that you were not in the notification area? I'm not in – I'm just outside the notification area. So you live close to the mine? I live close to the mine. 823 McCall's Mill Road, which is about maybe a quarter to half a mile away. My property begins just as you go on to Grimes Mill Road. I'm the second property on Grimes Mill Road. So your knowledge of being – your knowledge you have of Vulcan mine is something you've explored or something you've worked with the Neighborhood Association or something you've worked with the attorney of that organization? No, I'm here as a neighbor, but I also did take the mine tour. I've been involved in evaluating mines around the world for a number of years, so I understand both mining and also a number of other activities. As we said, the current proposal before the board doesn't present the information that's required under the mining ordinance and as such really should not have even been brought forward. This is not – this is to say that as we look at it, both building inspection and planning should have known that the information that was necessary wasn't available to this point. And what I'm going to do is kind of go through that a little bit for you. What you have before you is kind of the – it will be the verbiage portion of what you're going to see on the screen. You'll also see some other pieces of information that are contained as exhibits already in the book itself. When we look at applicability, as Gloria alluded to, you went down through the steps of applying. Well, there are two parts to an application. One is an initial application, and then what's called a reapplication. A reapplication kicks in, and these are just two of the aspects. when any significant moderation or alteration of the aspect of the underground mine or quarry plan, i.e., when they went to level two, when they did that in the 90s, they should have been back to reapply. They did not. Expansion beyond the defined mining boundary. They have a defined mining boundary, and that's this current proposal. This constitutes a reapplication. Reapplication is a more stringent process. It requires a larger mapping area. They're two miles, and there are a number of items which must be listed on the map. That's not supplied. A mining plan is not supplied. There's a number of things that are required under the ordinance, and pretty much all of these are not available. I will tell you that in December, the first thing that I asked them for with their attorney present was a mining plan. I was told we don't have one. And I would agree with that. What they have is in the reasonableness report, you'll see a tab that says mining plan. What that is is a topographic map with some lines drawn on it. That is not a mining plan. And that doesn't meet anyone's terms of a mining plan. They have to have a reclamation plan. That's not included. They have to have an operations description. There is a small one in the reasonableness report, but I'm kind of a little confused as to what's the reasonableness report because there are pieces of it that in their presentation they've kind of backed away from some of the things that were included by Marshall Miller as an example. They have to have an operations description, as I said, more details necessary. A reclamation description, that's not supplied. A transportation plan, there are guidelines set out in the ordinance. I'm not going to bore you by talking about what all those individual guidelines are. You can read that, but that's not available. Then there's a host of other information that's not a part of the original application. The reason – this is the quarry from an aerial photograph point of view. And it's a little hard to see, but there's a blue line, and that is their property boundary. And when you look at that – and the reason this is up here is because part of the mining and hoarding ordinance requires a bonding for reclamation. Under the bond, they claim to be disturbing 31.94 acres, based on what I understand. When we look at this, inside the blue line, it's 130 acres. I think it's pretty easy to note that we're looking at roughly 65-70 percent of the 130, not 31 acres. Yes, the asphalt plant does take up five, maybe 10 acres. However, when you look at that and who holds the ultimate responsibility for reclamation under that, should the asphalt plant default, Vulcan would have the would have to reclaim that property. It's on the front of your book. And then when you look at the performance bond, this is the initial one. This is the one from September 2010. Several things to note. So we're looking at $50,000 at the time. I think anyone with unreasonable understanding would note that to clean up 75 or 80 acres of property back to some reasonable state of being is going to take you a lot more than $50,000. And this is the standard to which they're being held at the moment. That's a low number. And also, I will also point out that you see Vulcan Materials Company. And the reason that's important is – I'll explain that to you in a little bit – but Vulcan is not the owner. They're not the operator. This is the update, because they did update their reclamation liability, and they now have it at $78,000. Still woefully inadequate. it. In my opinion, you should be looking at having an independent engineer evaluate what the reclamation liability would be and have a bond put in place that truly meets that liability. Wouldn't that be based upon the requirements of what they would have to do as for the reclamation? Yes. There has to be a plan put in place. They've not supplied what they're going to do. But generally what you try to do is return that to some useful activity that would match the current area. But specifically they're not required to do any specific thing? In terms of the state they're not as an example because quarries, limestone mines aren't under the same guidelines as coal mines. But so we're really the body that's going to be overseeing what happens out there. So you really have to have some sort of a bond that matches the liability should they walk away. And when you get into changing company names, et cetera, that's the kind of shell games that we've seen in the coal industry for a long time in an effort to get rid of reclamation liabilities. I'm not saying Vulcan's doing that, but you just have to – the citizens need to be protected from having to spend a lot of money down the road. So in so many words, are you saying if there had been a mine plan, there would also have been a reclamation plan? Those are two different things. Because the mine plan in this case would concentrate on the underground portion of the mine, not really on the surface because at least in terms of what they've told us, the surface wasn't going to change. What they should be doing is a more extensive mine plan for the underground operation. When – okay. So Gloria did touch on the valid existing rights or the vested rights, but there are some hoops that had to be jumped through under the Mining Ordinance to establish vested rights. They didn't do that. And just as an example of that, mining is prohibited with 1,000 feet of existing residences which are off the property being mined, meaning on Hidden Haven the residences wouldn't count if that was part of the mining operation, as an example. But anyone else's surrounding residence that's off the property or owned by some other owner, they couldn't mine within 1,000 feet. Probably one of the – when I said that Vulcan had not really been in compliance since the beginning of time, here's what I meant. The Ordinance 252.91 was finalized on December 12, 1991. The ordinance required that they had six months to obtain a certificate of occupancy and a building permit and have a conditional use permit in hand. They had a six-month time horizon. This wasn't, oh, by the way, just do it whenever you feel like it. They had a timeframe to meet. Vulcan filed its application, just filed the application on June 18th outside that timeframe. That application was not granted until a later date. I'm going to actually show you copies of those. Here's the application. You can see the June 18, 1992 date. Then you also see a whole list of things that are checked. Vicinity map, reclamation plan, mining plan, et cetera. This is kind of interesting because under the open records request – now – and this would be – oh, that's tab five, yes. This is called the initial 1992 permit. You would think that because this is probably the most important document that anyone would ever get for the Vulcan mine, that this would be kind of hold a place of importance inside the LFUCG records if this information was actually supplied. If it was, they are not able to supply to us. We asked for it. We have not received it. So that – you know, so I can't tell you whether they did it or didn't do it. Who did you ask for? We had an open records request to building inspection. Actually, we had an open records request to every department within the city. This is the – if you remember the discussion that Mary Diane Hanna, where she went through that in detail. This information was not supplied, and it brings into question whether it was available. Because guess what? This is what you should be looking at and evaluating whether someone's doing what they said they were going to do. So I have real questions about that. Secondly, then we take a look at what was actually issued. And this is the building permit. And if you note the date there, 9-14-92. Again, outside the time frame. If you're not within the time frame, you don't meet your deadlines, you have problems. These are rules. They're not guidelines. And in addition to that, we need to look at building inspect – BOA? It's clearly set out in the mining ordinance that Board of Adjustment approval is required. It's not an option. Then again we take a look at the certificate of occupancy and the conditions that someone wrote down. We don't know who. It was not the Board of Adjustment because there was no hearing. In addition to that, in 1998 Vulcan had a change of ownership. Again, reapplication requires in Section 833F, if the sale of greater than 10 percent of the stock, if there's an assignment, if there's a lease, if there's a merger or otherwise changing ownership, then the quarry must come back or minor quarry must come back for a reapplication. Oh, yes. Exhibit 7. I'm going to show them the deed here in a second. I'll show you the special warranty deed where this is transferred. But on December 31, 1998, Vulcan did grant, bargain, sell, and convey its assets from Vulcan materials to Vulcan construction materials and the real estate, so who owns the property itself, to Vulcan lands. Vulcan did not reapply as required. And here is the special warranty deed. Mr. Hopgood was the purveyor of that, I'm pretty sure. Down on the bottom, returned to Mr. Hopgood. And basically, that's the language, and it's a special warranty deed. They can say, well, it's the same, that Vulcan Materials is the same parent company. It doesn't matter. Again, we look at the shell game issues and the actual ownerships. So for the Board of Adjustment, Vulcan never came before the BOA for the initial filing. They never came before the Board by changing the mining plan, going to level two. They never came before this body for the ownership changes. And the mining ordinance requires them to do so in all cases. This isn't at their whim. It's a requirement. So, what do we conclude from all this? So Vulcan failed to meet the required timing for the initial conditional certificate of occupancy and did not provide the approvals. They failed to follow the mining ordinance as we just talked about. They did not provide the required mapping and therefore the application does not have the necessary information required in the mining ordinance for you all to approve this request. They do not have a current valid certificate of occupancy. Why? For all the reasons I just listed, they failed at every turn pretty much. And really, in my opinion, and this will be my opinion, the BOA has no choice except to deny the application. I'm not going to talk any more in detail about the mining ordinance. We could go on for a long period of time. However, suffice it to say that it's pretty much been, oh, trust us, everything's okay, and I'm sorry that can't that's not the law of the land number one and number two they've shown that they haven't they failed in that regard consistently and then I had the rest of the story we have a geologist who's really a specialist he's an EKU PhD professor who studied in this area for the 1989 hearing and his name is Dr. Ralph Ewers and his specialty is groundwater and parsed topography. If you remember back to the discussions we had earlier last time what that means is the groundwater movement through these limestone structures. There is a letter which is exhibit 11 you can read it at your leisure but basically it's going to say the following. He continues to include that these carbonate rocks on the site constitute a karst aquifer. The faulting area makes the rocks particularly susceptible to karst formation. That's important. As we know, Clay's Ferry has a fault zone. Yes, it's been inactive for several thousand years, but what are we betting on here? It is what it is. These combine to make the area surrounding the Vulcan operation particularly susceptible to groundwater and stream flow losses, i.e. Elk Lake Falls Creek. The under-draining of that has been pretty well documented in the previous discussions. So basically, Dr. Ewers says mining in this area is not a good idea because these activities will continue and the groundwater will continue to be under-drained. So one of the other questions, things that arose from the discussion last time was, does Vulcan have alternatives? If they are brought into compliance today and they do have alternatives that don't require them to go to Hidden Haven, they have their mining areas by going down further, level three, four, five. There are multiple levels. There are limestone mines in Kentucky that are mining up to six levels deep. This just gives you an idea of what the strata looks like. This is a core from Fayette County, and you can see the white are the limestone areas, and the black are interbedded other things that you wouldn't really want to mine at that point. And I'm not going to get into detail about that, but suffice it to say that going onto the Hidden Haven property does not really impact the immediate life of this operation. They have 30 plus years, maybe more, without going that direction. Is that a part of your exhibit book, that sheet? That sheet is not, I don't think. We can make it part of it, but no, that's not part of the exhibit book. Okay. That's all I need for that. The reason I ask, the scale is awfully small from the screen. Yeah, and it starts at 180 feet down. So it just shows you really the limestone areas themselves. The black is limestone that's interbedded with other things. So it's just a guideline that tells you that they have the ability to go down. One of the things they talked about was what the costs of that were, and it would be exorbitantly expensive. I can tell you in my experience, because I've done this innumerable times, I owned an engineering company that really just serviced the mining industry. The capital costs of that are not that great to go down to the next level, and they even brought up they wanted to go down to the next level possibly as an additional condition when they were adding things. And the mining costs aren't that greatly affected. They're affected maybe a little bit, but it's not substantial and the margins here are okay. And it's not really our responsibility to make sure that they're making X amount of profit, et cetera. And I'm, you know. I probably will have a question for you after we listen to everybody because I'm That's fine. Any time. And then we had some comparisons, and I'm not going to go into great detail about this, but we had a comparison to the catacombs, if any of you have been there like I have, which are very small spans. This was related to longevity of the roof and basically the roof over time. And, you know, how long could this withstand, how long is how long? How long is the life of the mine? How long do these things last? Yes. Since you've gone there, I'm going to ask my question to you since you've gone there. Regardless of whether you feel they are operating legally or illegally, I'm going to ask the question based upon the levels where they are. If they go below level, let's say go to level four or level five, Which is the most dangerous for the area out there, going down deeper or going out wider? That's a good question. One of the things that we look at is we think both have continued impacts to the area, but going out water takes this into a larger footprint. I understand. And so going out water would be, if I had to choose between the two, that would be the one that I would say has the greatest impact. Going out wider, even if it's going out at one level. Yeah, it's not the – we're not talking about cost here. We're just talking about the impact from an environmental perspective. That's not my particular expertise. I do know a lot about it. But, you know, going out wider – going down further, you know, you're on the same footprint, and therefore you would have less of an impact. But you mentioned about the ceiling over time, deteriorating. I actually didn't mention that, but I'm going to talk about the roof fall. I mean, I am going to say that there are roof falls on level one. What you do to minimize those type of issues is one of the things you do is you columnize the pillars. That means putting one on top of another as you go down levels. This is done all the time in coal mining, as an example. But if you look at level one, the pillars themselves are fairly haphazard. They're not the uniform type pillars that we even saw. They're more uniform than what we saw on level two than what is exhibited on level one. Well, wouldn't there be more danger going down if those are – if you're feeling that way right now about the pillars? Well, if you – yeah, then you'd say if level one is the problem, then they shouldn't be on level two. And being on level two anywhere is still a problem. So we had the comparison between the catacombs, which we know are fairly small spaces as related to what we're looking at here because these are very large openings. And then the Mammoth Cave, which kind of confounded me because that's probably one of the greatest areas of interaction between limestone rock and water, removing the limestone over time. Why you would compare that because guess what, over some period of time there will be eventually a subsidence of that area. We don't have to go that far because they've had roof falls both on Richmond Road at level ones clearly marked on their map and at Central Rock, two that we know of. And that's pretty much what I have for you today. Basically in summary, they've not followed the mining ordinance, haven't submitted the information that's required and haven't proven that they're a trustworthy neighbor. Thank you. Andy Roberts? Yes sir. Who do you have here? This is Dr. Andy Roberts, veterinarian neighbor in the notification area. He wants to talk to you about compatibility and how it impacts his horse farm operation. Good afternoon. My name is Andy Roberts. I'm a veterinarian and I'm a horse farmer. I live at 6921 Old Richmond Road. I'm a member of the Old Richmond Road homeowners Association and I farm about 75 acres with the love of my life Dr. Lori Lawrence and the proposed site of this newly expanded mine directly borders our farm on two sides. We have a very large area that touches this. As such, it will directly impact my ability to raise horses on this land. Since Lily, the horse in this picture, was unavailable to come down here and speak with you guys or any of her friends, I'm going to be speaking on her behalf. In 1997, Lori and I bought 13 agricultural acres, an old vegetable farm with a house at 6921 Old Richmond Road. In 2005 we expanded that farm by buying 63 acres additional agricultural acres right across the road at 6840 Old Richmond Road. That land is the land that is bordered on two sides by Hidden Haven's property in question. This parcel of land is also bordered in the rear by Elk Lake Creek which runs across the property he also contains numerous springs ponds and several old stone walls and those are all marked on the survey which we had done when we bought it when we bought this land we didn't buy it in an industrial district we didn't buy it next to an industrial site didn't buy it next to a dump we didn't buy it next to a mine we actually thought really hard about where we bought it we wouldn't buy in any of the surrounding counties we bought prime land in Fayette County because we felt our property rights would be protected and we paid a premium for that agricultural land here in Fayette County so matter of fact we bought land next to a so-called nature preserve if you can see this photo we bought this land specifically to raise Lexington Signature Product horses. We intend to finish upgrading this farm, hopefully build a nice house on the larger piece of property, and eventually place this land in the PDR. Just to be clear from my perspective, the way I was taught, agriculture is the production of plants and animals. That's what we do on that 75 acre, two parcel piece of land. agriculture preserves green space and is sustainable and Fayette County is the number two agriculture county in the state of Kentucky and up until recently we were number one but I don't have to tell anybody how tough the horse business is these days. Mining however is not agriculture and this is a real live picture of our not too far away neighbors. Mining is heavy industry and and it's incompatible with our ability to raise horses on our land. The seismic waves, the noise, and the dust are at very least a nuisance, but more likely they pose a danger to our livestock, my ability to farm safely, not to mention our land value as well as the land values of my neighbors. And to paraphrase the Vulcan manager who spoke to you guys here at our last little meeting, It's simply cheaper to devalue the land of me and my neighbors than it is to go to level three. I find it incredible that somebody would have the audacity to come in here and ask you to approve something on the basis of expanding their profit margins at the expense of all the neighbors around them. I wonder if anyone at the mine would take responsibility if the barn we've been renovating were to fall over. Would they take responsibility if one of my horses runs through a fence, injuring themselves, injuring me, or perhaps an innocent bystander? Old Richmond Road runs right by there. It's a 55 mile an hour highway. We're very cognizant of that. We try and keep horses that are fractious away from the road. Away from the road will become toward the mine. If I have a horse escape onto Old Richmond Road because he becomes afraid and bolts through a fence and runs into somebody's car, can I call the folks at Vulcan? Will anyone from the mine be there for me if one of my horses falls in a sinkhole? Right now we don't have any sinkholes on those properties. I feel completely safe turning my horses out. If one develops as one had on adjacent property and somebody lost a calf in one, if that happens to one of my horses, who will I turn to? I'm certainly not a geologist. I'm not a hydrologist. I don't have any formal schooling in any of that. But if land directly adjacent to my land is mined, wouldn't it seem reasonable that the rate of water runoff from my farm would be increased? The water's got to go someplace. The land I farm has some erosion issues. And we've consulted with Farm Service Agency and RDC and taken appropriate steps to keep horses out of the areas where the riparian zones where we're trying to let the creek beds settle. grow back up they had previously not been properly managed so we're trying to control those issues and I would just wonder if if we allow this to move next door is that going to be a problem and I don't feel confident that the folks at Vulcan have have addressed that I wonder if the mining company or Mr. Anderson or Vulcan land Vulcan mining whoever is in charge will they provide my horses with water if the wells, ponds, and springs on my land go dry as a result of this expanded mine. If during their blasting they do hit water, can we reasonably expect them to be forthcoming about it based on their history? So far I don't even see that they stay on their own land. This mine has a more than 30 year history of damage to the local environment, including mining off their own land, but yet they're asking you to allow them to expand into an environmentally sensitive area as noted on this map. Strangely enough, some 20 years ago, Vulcan came to this board with a claim that the mine was mined out. They needed an expansion. Somehow decades later, they haven't missed a day's work. They're still there. And please understand me. I'm a consumer gravel. I've got two gravel driveways. We've got gravel floors in our barns. We use gravel at our gates and around the horse waters. I'm not opposed to mining at all. I think it's an important resource. But I also think there's a place for it. And this is not that place. Prime, endangered, environmentally sensitive Fayette County farmland is not that place. particularly when I as a consumer of rock can buy superior quality rock from other vendors at a lower price. I can buy rock from five miles away for $100 a load less than what I can buy it from Vulcan, which is eight-tenths of a mile away. It's not a neighborhood business. There are other people I can go to. There's really not a need for the existing quarry there, except that I understand that Vulcan is in the business of selling rock. Mr. Hopgood stated in his testimony to this board earlier that the market radius is about 25 miles. If the the information I'm talking about is also it's all included under tab 16 although there's no reason to go there and look at it now. If you draw a 25 mile radius from where I live there are nine other quarries that can supply me with rock. We don't have any problem getting rock out on Old Richmond Road. The PVA values the mine at about $500,000 and it's probably one of the only properties in Fayette County that loses value every day. Yet Vulcan asks you today to put millions of dollars worth of investment in the surrounding neighborhood at risk with a mine expansion. It simply doesn't make economic sense. In addition, I understand that Vulcan has a $50,000 give or take maybe 75,000 now reclamation bond and I'm sure everybody here pays a water bill I'm pretty sure that at Kentucky Americans current rates that's not even enough to flood the current mine no less to do any fancy upgrades so this application is not compatible with the farms and fine homes in our neighborhood it's compatible with the environment it's not compatible with being 2,500 feet from Kentucky Americans water pumping station on the Kentucky River. It's not compatible with the PDR. It's not compatible with the Rural Land Management Plan or the Comprehensive Plan. It's not compatible with being a good neighbor as someone associated with this application, I can't tell you who specifically, cut a wire fence at the back of my farm, place survey stakes clearly inside of our previously surveyed property line which includes a a stone fence of about a hundred years age I don't trespass on other people's land without permission I wish they wouldn't do that to me and I know that in our last meeting here the folks at Vulcan spoke about GPS and how they're getting better and there there wouldn't be any encroachment all the rest of this hoo-ha that hasn't stopped them on trespassing or mining on other people's property so far so I think you know GPS is a great thing but I I think promise promises. I also want to tell you that I've never been here before. I've never spoken to this body. And I'm not opposed to development. I just think we have to be smart about it. This board approved a winery and a restaurant, which I do not own any interest in, which is less than 300 feet from the back porch of our home. We did not oppose that. We felt it was an agricultural use in nature and actually a positive for the neighborhood. Right around the corner on Jack's Creek Pike, a riding arena was proved at the last meeting right here as I sat in the audience. Not one of the people in this room stood up in opposition to that request. This is not one of those not-in-my-backyard issues. It's an issue of everything in its proper place. I think we could all agree that simply because there is a block of green grass down here on Main Street it would not be appropriate for someone to turn cattle out there. The zoning ordinance states that the board shall prove that this application will not have a negative impact on the requested property or any other surrounding properties. Please carefully consider the permanent negative impact this mine will have on our entire neighborhood. Please support Fayette County agriculture and say no to the mine. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Nancy Robertson, she's going to talk about her personal experiences with blasting. I wish you wouldn't have done that to me. Good afternoon. My name is Nancy Robertson. I live at 7037 Old Richmond Road. When we built our house in 1969, our builder said, I'm glad you don't have a basement because we're on solid rock. Regardless of being on solid rock over the years with frequent blasting that shook the ground in the entire house, the foundation settled to the point that in 2001 we had to have it lifted. their second page is a copy of the bill where we did have it lifted and can't see it real well but this is the corner of my house and shows where they removed let me just show you the picture that is the corner of the house where they have removed shrubs and another place where it's dug down in the hydraulic jack that's attached to the house to lift it the cost of having this done was forty five hundred dollars i don't have a copy of the bill for replacing the garage floor but it was approximately five thousand dollars to have the badly cracked concrete floor removed and replaced uh i cannot prove the blasting caused my problem just because I could feel vibrations on a regular basis but they cannot prove that the blasting did not do it either. I had these problems when the blasting was further away. If they are allowed to expand their operations they will be practically across the street. Columbia Gas has a transmission line that runs across the front of our property. I find it interesting that when we were replacing our blacktop driveway with a concrete one that Columbia Gas halted the project for two weeks and let us proceed only if we did not allow a concrete truck to drive across the line. It doesn't make sense that you can blast daily within a quarter of a mile of this line, but you can't drive a concrete truck across it. I want to request that you deny this appeal because I feel that allowing Vulcan to expand their operation can only be detrimental to the entire neighborhood and will most certainly have a negative effect on the value of my property and all the surrounding properties. The Old Richmond Road has been designated a scenic byway, but Vulcan Materials and all the truck traffic involved in their operation does nothing to contribute to that scene. I would ask the Board to deny this request and put any other safeguards in place that they can to ensure the current operations will meet the requirements of the mining query and ordinance for the safety of the surrounding property owners. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Jim Lerton. I live at 7098 Turner Station Road. I share a 576-foot border with the land that you're considering for approval, that land belonging to Dennis Anderson. I'm going to prove to you beyond a shadow of a doubt that mining in that area damaged my house. I have some text of my comments under tab 14 because I want those in the record. But I'm going to show you a graphical representation of what happened, and I think you'll have to agree with me. This is my house. You can see it's quarry stone or Kentucky granite. There's a lot of construction around here in the 30s and 40s. All of you have seen it. The bright side you're looking at there is the south side. On the north side of the house... You can see that wall. Oh, you can see that wall there is vinyl. You have to go. Hold on, hold on. It won't pick up. Hold on, hold on. It won't pick up. I have to be able to show them. Okay, you can see that that north wall of my house is vinyl. That's because it fell off. Now, I'm going to show you a timeline here. The way I built this timeline is along the base are years. And the height of an arrow is when I found out something. For example, I may not have known what happened in 1986. In fact, I'm going to show you I did. All I know is that in the third quarter of 1987, after 10 years experience living out there, all of a sudden the shock waves at my house got drastic. Now, I'd felt vibrations from the mine for 10 years. I knew what they felt like. These were horrible. This was an earthquake. In August of 1988, I had a wall failure. I was taking a shower to go to work and looked out the bathroom window, and the wall was separated six inches from the window casing. I got a rock contractor out there. He said, the wall is separated. It's going to have to be torn down. You could actually push on it and it moved like a bowl of jello. So he tore it down. We both looked in there. There had been no water behind that wall. There was no deterioration of the ties in that wall. According to him, there was no problem with the construction of that wall. But there were five ties broken in the middle of it. And while he was taking the wall down, it just so happened it was 5 o'clock in the afternoon and the quarry blasted. And he said, what was that? I said, that was a quarry. That's what I've been having a problem with. And he said, that's what made the wall fall off your house. So we took the wall down and we put the vinyl that you saw up as a temporary measure just to protect that side of my house while I decided what to do. Meanwhile, I called Vulcan and said, I think you guys knocked a wall off my house. Naturally, they denied that, and I don't blame them. If I'd been there, I would have too. But they agreed to put a seismograph in my basement. It took about two weeks to get it there, and during that two weeks, like magic, the blasting shockwaves decreased. And I mean they decreased to a quarter of what they had been. so the seismograph was there for about a month and then I got a letter saying we're well within the state requirements and all that so let's work on this timeline some more I didn't know what was going on down here at the Board of Adjustment in June 2nd and 5th of 1989 I read about it in the newspaper in August of 1989 what the board had found out about Vulcan mining off its property penetrating 220 feet into the Turner property along a front 1,200 feet long. So I thought, gee, that must apply to me. So after all of that got shut down, there was 20 years of peace and quiet until December of 2010 when I got this public notice of what was being proposed. Then the neighborhood started to get together, and we moved over here. I learned of the Turner lease that had occurred in 1986, and I learned of the mining ordinance that had been done in 1991. And guess what? I go back to the beginning of the Turner lease, and when my wall fell down and the Board of Adjustment hearing happened, and that's when I got all the blasting shock, and that's when the wall fell off my house. Now, during that same period of time, Vulcan got a permit from the state to increase their mining from 337,000 tons per year to 800,000 tons per year, almost three times. And there was still one blast a day. That blast had to be a heck of a lot stronger than they had been blasting before in order to increase that production. And I have a letter in your text showing that they got that permit so my comments are and I'll get back to the podium there's certain things the mining ordinance requires the Board of Adjustment approval of an existing condition map showing among other things all existing structures and types of structures on adjacent property that are within 300 feet of the common boundary line on a scale of not less than 1 inch equals 200 feet. My home, my garage, my shop, and my greenhouse and my barn are all in that zone. This is a map that we didn't make up. We got it from the city. The green line here is the boundary of Hidden Haven. The green area there is my house. And you can't quite see this red line across the top, but that white part in between the boundary and that red line is everything I just told you. So I would ask you a rhetorical question. Has the Board of Adjustment approved that map? Have you even seen it? It was item two on our Kentucky Open Records Act request, and we did not receive it. So I assume it does not exist. Under the Zoning Ordinance, the Board of Adjustments shall specifically consider and be able to find that A, the proposed use will not constitute a public nuisance by creating excessive several things, dust or damage to the environment of the surrounding properties. Nancy Robertson and I have demonstrated damage. I water my orchid collection with rain collected off my greenhouse roof. The initial water after a rain is milky with limestone dust. Our cars are constantly covered with dust in just one day after we wash them. I believe you must deny this request. It clearly lacks required documentation and violates mandatory provisions of the zoning ordinance. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Who's next? Bill. Bill McCord. I'm going to talk to you about St. Coles and how long he's lived out there and his family's lived out there. You tell me when you want to slide it past. Okay. My name is John W. McCord, Jr. I live at 3312 Nantucket Drive here in Lexington. Between my two daughters and I, we own and manage the farm at the corner of Old Richmond Road and Evans Mill Road. As I am sure you board members know, that this part of Fed County is considered one of the most environmentally sensitive areas containing a great number of geologic hazards areas in the Fayette County, the entire county. As a former member of the Green Space Commission, which I served for about ten years, a lot of time was spent talking about how carousel-related areas were not conducive to the development of any kind. We spent a lot of time talking about sinkholes and what causes them to occur. What came out of these discussions led to what is now and is still the comprehensive plan and the zoning ordinance today. No, that's not mine. Not now. No. Yeah, the first one. Yeah, Exhibit 14. Is that tab 14? Tab 14 in the book. Here's a page from the 1980 Comprehensive Plan Identifying Sink Holes in Geologic Hazard Areas. As you can see by the red X of Kenya. Is that it? No? You can see it. is placed on this map. This request sits within one of the environmental sensitive areas with a concentration of sinkholes and geological hazards spots of all around. We did have on our Green Space Commission members who were knowledgeable in this area, geologicus, who who emphasized this over and over. That is why so much is made of it in the comprehensive or in the green space plan. The comprehensive plan and why the zoning ordinance speaks directly to this. All of those plans were written in detail to reflect that. All of these adoptive plans and in the zoning ordinances reflect that some have industrial operations should not be considered at all. In this area, this specific use is harmful to the sensitive geologic hazard area and is not compatible. Also included is in the 2007 Comp Plan definitions for sinkholes, which reflect the new engineering manuals and zoning ordinances, subdivisions, regulations. I am not a geologist, nor am I to pretend to know all about science behind sinkholes, but I can certainly give more than 50 years worth of first-hand observation on the land on my family farm that has been owned in the family since 1880. And first-hand observation for the land on the neighbor's farms, which I, as a kid, probably freely roamed over to see what was there. Three, four, and five shift. What am I passing on to you in some of the pages from the 2008 or 2001 report from the USGS on these environmental impacts on quarrying stone in cast areas, what it says is easy to understand. only the pages pertaining to the type of man we are discussing in this case, I will put the full report in the official records. What that first page tells you, or the report in the corner, or on page 3 in the top corner, They have known for over 50 years that mining and cars can result in permanent damage to the environment. The next page talks about the type of operations. Our case here, today, since the maps they provide show, and we all know these are millions gallons of water and pounded inside these mines in numerous areas on them both the levels marked on the report. Gloria Martin talked about this and showed some maps or photos of this and I'm going to skip over to another page which would be page 8 on the thing. The next page at the top specifically states that the mining aggregate may cause impact well beyond the limits of the operation and that it may have more value left in the mine, in the ground, than the value of the stone extracted. The next page of this report covers the negative effects of noise, dust, trucks, loss of habitat above and below the ground level, all of which are pertinent to this case, but that is not what I want to talk about today on this. I want to tell you about the sinkholes and my personal experience observations which which we'll get to a wee bit later. Number 10, this report states that the sinkholes in Cursed will form over time, long time periods of time, But not suddenly unless the groundwater is being withdrawn and some of the man-made events is contrary to it. the next three slides I found that the Alabama study on that on that page to be interesting since they found that out of 4,000 sinkholes that opened up in Alabama only 50 of those were from natural causes that's four thousand that's three thousand nine hundred and fifty that were caused from these operations Mr. McCord can I ask you a question please yes sir so you have a farm out there in this area yes I do on your farm over the number of years how Since the mine has been there, how many years have you been on the farm? All my life, 86. You don't look that old. Well, you'd like to see my driver's license? No. At least that says it on that. I guess this leads to my question to you. On your property, how many sinkholes have you found that you would lay claim to this mine? How many sinkholes? Yes. One, and I will be getting to that shortly, very shortly. Studies make it clear that withdrawing groundwater from forest areas can cause sinkholes. On the next page, that's number 14, please, their study can give you the direct relationship between quarrying operations and sinkholes. They tell you that in their research, they have found that most induced sinkholes in Alabama were related to the quarrying operations within 600 meters. That's 1,968 feet or over one-third of a mile. They also stated that related sinkholes were as far away as 1.6 kilometers, which is a mile away in Alabama, in here too, I guess. In another part of Alabama, 1,000 collapses occurred within an area of about 41.5 kilometers squared, which is four square miles. There are plenty of other such studies to be found relating to the acquiring in carousel areas in the U.S. There are some pages that one of them is directly related to Fayette County. It is the KGS study that was done by our own Jim Redman and participated in the writing of that. That's, I think, probably about 16 on your screen. Well, that's part of it there. What it says is that one key statement to the entire hearing, page 6, top corner, is geologic hazards are different from environmental sensitive areas in that environmental problems are so numerous that development even with the severe design limitations would pose a serious problem to the imminent or the surrounding areas. The first map that I gave you at the very beginning is how to our sinkhole, now to our sinkholes that have been forming at an alarming rate into the ponds that have quit holding water. And I want to go back to one of my own experiences on this. I have spent my entire life on this farm and I mentioned it's the corner of Old Richmond Road and Evans Mill Road and it's within a one mile radius of the Vulcan site it has been in my family since 1880 and is the oldest property between Lexington and the Clay's Ferry to remain in the same family, which is about 131 or 32 years at this point. I'm not sure of the exact years on this, but about eight or nine years ago, in the middle of a field that has a slight slope, maybe six, seven degrees at the most, that has been farmed for many years with crops, tobacco, and corn, and hay crops and things. And I noticed a hole that was 12 to 14 feet wide and about 10 feet in depth. At that time, after 75 years in this area and on this farm, it was a new experience for me to come across something like this on the farm. So what should I do? I called Vulcan and had them deliver a truck of rock to fill in that hole. It cost $100, and it didn't fill up quite all the hole at all. three days later of the rock to be seen in that hole I could only find possibly five dollars worth of the hundred dollar rock that was dumped in there the rest of it was covered up and over I learned something the sinkhole is now about 12 to 15 inches from being level with the field at this point it is covered with grass I still won't ride a tractor through that sinkhole for fear of what could happen and what could happen to me. There is very little water runoff to where this ground sunk. Eight or ten years in the middle eight or ten years ago in the middle of the sink you can put those on there if you will. I found a hole about four feet wide and the depth was unknown. It was dark down in that hole. Seven or eight years. In the very short time, this hole became 22 feet across in diameter and probably about 20 feet depth. It has been filled since then with rock and concrete and almost to the ground level. And it's still sinking some in settlement, I hope, is all that is sinking. I am certain that many years ago, when George Washington was President of the United States that these sinks on my farm which are about four were there when he was President. Possibly Daniel Boone walked through some of them through his trips through Kentucky and because we're not that far from the Boonesboro area and so forth. I know as well as Vulcan knows and as well as many others know what caused this. This is a permanent scar that'll be on my farm from now until eternity. Sir, can I ask you another question? All right sir. You just mentioned that these sinkholes in your opinion have been on your farm since during the time that George Washington was president of the United States. No, I, excuse me, I didn't mention that there's sinkholes, I said the sinks. There's a difference in my thoughts of what a sink is which is a depression and and such as you see here in this picture without the the fenced in area and a sinkhole. A sinkhole is when that depression sinks. Alright, so you can go ahead, O. Elk Lake Creek runs through the entire length of my farm. the headwaters of the start of that is the farm adjacent back towards Lexington, towards northwest, I guess it would be. About 50-50 split by farm is on one side of Elk Creek and the other side. for a number of years now there's this creek is for all practical purposes is remained dry except maybe in the early spring or the spring when we've had a lot of spring rain and snow melting and water into the ground or when we've had a heavy rains in the summer years ago this creek flowed constantly from one end of the farm to another I don't know how many years ago but it's been quite a while and whether it was before or after the Vulcan started but about halfway through the farm the creek went underground and then a little bit later it came out and it runs all the way down and through the farm and it has caused me that because of a lack of pollen on one side that has just quit holding any water at all that I've had to put cattle fountains on the farm. I'm very fortunate through the front of my farm, the entire length of it on the old Richmond Road and a little ways back to Evans Mill Road, there is the city water line from Lexington to Clay's Ferry. Not everybody is fortunate enough to have that city water line. I would be in bad shape if I did not have that water lines coming there to right where I could tap on to get cattle water. Two years ago, this farm was placed in the PDR program, which I spent many meetings right in this room that helped getting started over a period of time when the Green Space Commission worked on this. Why be a part of the PDR program to take part and to protect farm encroachment, to protect the rural landscape of Fed County, and to preserve the farmland throughout Fed County. In summary, in reason for denial of this issue that is being proposed, The USGA report relates to us how mining, quarrying, and environmental sensitive and geolite hazard areas are not good idea and can potentially cause serious damage to the site in question and the surrounding properties. The 1980 comprehensive plan, with the map shown in the site in question, to be in an environmentally sensitive area as well as in geological hazardous areas. The Kentucky GS reprint authority by the Lexington-Fayette urban county government's planning states that geologic hazard areas problems are so numerous that development even with the severe design and limitations would pose a serious threat or serious problems to the surrounding areas if they could then the lights again and I want to go back to the one one little thing here please picture there is the sinkhole that fell in several years ago on our farm that I've had the fences in that picture is taken from the right near the edge of Richmond Road and over into the towards the field there's additional pictures that similar that's another one other from about the same area this picture is looking back from the far side facing the Richmond Road and that that fencing area around that is to of course protect any livestock or anything from going in there but you can see the you can see what was a sink what is now a sink hole thank you for your attention please thank you and before we go on we're gonna take a little break we're gonna take about a seven minute break please Chairman, I've got about two more speakers, so it won't be long. How much longer, Don? I've got less than 10 minutes. One minute. Nobody ran with that. I've got a hand. You're telling me to sit down? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. so guitar solo Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We are going to call this meeting back to order, please. And Mr. Todd, would you let us know how many more people you've got to speak, please? We have, how many speakers do we have? Is that what your question was? I'm sorry, I was talking. I have three speakers left on my list, and I think there are other people here from the community who want to say something as well briefly. Time frame, half an hour. Thank you. Ready to go? I'm ready. Dr. Charles Martin, I'm going to talk to you about traffic issues. Thank you. I'm Charles Martin. I live at 7416 Grimes Mill Road and I've lived there 30 years. I'm going to talk about trucks and roads. Pretty simple and straightforward, but first I learned something last time I was here about blasting and about how the impulses from the blast travel on the bedding planes of the stone, which may explain why I doodle during the meeting, why my house sometimes and neighbors at different areas at great distance from the mine feel it. If you're on the bedding plane, then see the blast force going from like level two right over there to those little houses that are really on the outcrop of the stone. So I said, and that's kind of simplistic. I was thinking about the elevations from the Boone Creek, Elk Creek's not quite as deep. And they're about 900 feet is the top of the surface there and they're 300 feet down. So then we took it one more step and we said, well, look at it scientifically. And you can see the mine and the colors don't show you very much. But basically, there's a red line around the mine and a blue line around the mine. And those colors correspond to colors in the Kentucky River Palisades area and Long Boone Creek. So that you might explain how a house a mile and a half away feels a very strong vibration, particularly if it's a solid masonry house that's on the bedrock, which is the same stone. Unfortunately, there are a lot of historic National Registry structures at that plain. Early settlement and mills are on Boone Creek. Anyway, I've lived here a long time and had a lot of new sinkholes on our farm. We had actually one in a yard that's only about 200 or 300 yards from the quarry gate. We've had ponds go dry. But I want to talk really about the trucks and the roads. And I'd like to just briefly show you four or five regulations and then demonstrate noncompliance. Let's see if I can do the first one, Jim. Okay. It doesn't matter that you can read that basically heavy trucks increase the cost of building a highway and maintaining a highway. Heavy trucks interfere with and limit the use of highways for normal traffic, and they endanger the safety and the lives of the traveling public. that's not my opinion. That's Kentucky's statuette as worded in 1942. Furthermore, they said because of these things, we have to regulate heavy trucks to achieve economy of highway building and maintenance and so that the highways can be freely and safely used by the traveling public. And he goes on to say these vehicles have to be equipped to make minimum of noise, smoke, or other nuisance, and to protect the rights of other traffic and provide for the public safety. Well, Vulcan's not a trucking company, but Vulcan requires a relationship with trucking companies, and state and local ordinance make them responsible for safe and legal trucking. It's unlawful for any person employing or otherwise directing the operator of a vehicle to require or knowingly permit operation of the vehicle on a highway in any way contrary to law. There are a lot of other regulations related to trucking. Most of them have to deal with escaping loads. rocks fall off of gravel trucks and this has been addressed and readdressed escaping kind of spill loads vehicle must be constructed to prevent the contents escape more of the same you can't haul anything without preventing this escape the vehicle has to be constructed to prevent this escape you can't haul regardless of what you're hauling without a cover the owner and The operator of a minor quarry shall ensure that shipments over 10,000 pounds, that means you can go get your trunk full but not a big truck, 10,000 pounds have to leave the quarry, have to be covered, not just covered, but covered to avoid spillage. There are a couple of other regulations that I'll mention now and then we'll show some photographs and move on. In addition to regulating the trucks and their load, there are regulations regarding the routes the trucks must use. They're designated trucking routes. Trucks are also prevented from using certain streets and roads. Quarry access roads have been a special problem because these are the intersection of roads going in and out of the quarry with state and county roads that get a tremendous amount of traffic and the quarry is responsible for constructing and maintaining those intersections at a little heavier level than is required. So these photographs I think will demonstrate a lack of compliance. Some of these are old. Most of the trucks you see on the road now have a cover. The cover does not keep the load from falling off, but it does sort of cover up the load. You can see the gravel falling off the truck in various locations. Maybe put the light down a little bit. The truck on the bottom, there's gravel all over the road and the apron actually falling out from under the apron of the truck. The mud and gravel and water and ice at the top is right next to the entrance to US 25. This is the quarry entrance. Here's a truck. They're large trucks. They're sort of single unit four, which they have four axles. Here is the entrance to the quarry with Elk Lick Falls Road going off to the left with water ponding in a depression on the road. made by traffic there. Another little segment of Elk Lake Falls Road damaged by a lot of traffic. A lot of this traffic goes between the quarry entrance and the asphalt batch plant entrance. If Vulcan leases land to the asphalt batch plant, why should we take care of the road that connects the two? They use the city road for that. And they're hard on this road. You can tell it's already been paved and repaved, but it's cracking in. It's not constructed for that road. Dr. Martin? Yes, sir? Vulcan doesn't have anything to do with the asphalt company, do they? The asphalt company operates on their property. I would think they do. They allow the asphalt plant to be there. So you're saying the damage that's done to the roads potentially by the asphalt should be the problem of volcanic? No, I'm saying that the damage done to the road by heavy trucks. I'm spreading a broader blanket. But in that specific area, I believe that the city has done a lot, had to do a lot, to maintain a couple of hundred yard stretch of alcoholic falls between the two. I left the house with a camera to go find some spilled gravel on the road. I knew I'd find some and when I got to the end of Grimes Mill, this is spilled gravel on 25 and you can tell it was, well, you couldn't tell it was real recent because we had snow all winter. You can see Elk Lake Falls entrance in the back. The traffic is supposed to use US 25. supposed to use. I think they're not really limited. North and south from the quarry entrance. But this is Elk Lick again. They go on Elk Lick which is a small road and it had to be posted to try to keep people off of that property and that road. Cleveland Road, the same thing. small county road trucks going through it it had to be posted unfortunately not for many years after this fatal accident occurred there grimes mill had to be posted yeah Grimesville had to be posted and they had to have a sign saying no through trucks. This was after they had a sign there saying there's a three-ton bridge ahead. That posting was required in spite of the sign. That's all right. There's a truck. There's a bridge. Now, in fairness, there may not be the scale, but the point is that truck shouldn't be on the bridge. These roads are special. They're scenic, they're historic, but more importantly and practically, they're very small. They're not designed for these vehicles. McCall's Mill is also posted. Boggs Fork has a bridge listed at eight tons. Trucks are not compatible with these roads. Even the eight-mile stretch of US-25, where the trucks are supposed to go, has issues. There are over 125 entrances to the road, lots of them blind. You can see here the arrow to the left and the top figure is Grimes Mill and then to the right, that's the quarry entrance. The middle figure there has Leanne Lane and then Cleveland Road coming in. It's covered with, it has very few shoulders, there are no passing lanes, hills, curves, make passing a truck not a safe thing during any of the 8 mile stretch. And I can say that having driven it a thousand times in 30 years, you can't pass a truck there and probably shouldn't pass anyone. have to remember that the truck traffic has got to be regulated to let the highway be used freely and safely by the traveling public. There are three types of traveling public that deserve special attention. First, they're tourists. People are directed there by the Bluegrass Driving Tour, by the scenic byways, and they're driving slowly and they're looking around. Cards are on this road constantly with tractors, trailers, heavy machinery, loaded wagons and cyclists, bicycles and motorcycles love this scenic stretch for its curves and hills and those things are particularly susceptible to small amounts of spilled gravel. The transportation plan was required in an application. We've got two pages, not signed, not dated. I'm not sure where they came from, but this is the plan. Operational deliveries first. This is stuff coming to the quarry site. All shipments come from 25. That's the only way there. They all come by truck. They come usually in the daytime and usually 10 or less. It doesn't say anything about what kind of deliveries, what kind of trucks, what carriers. They bring in diesel fuel. They're bringing explosives. That's no information. Secondly, the product shipping is 100% by truck. Well, yes, it's going to be on 25 north and south. Well, yes, and it's going to be 6 in the morning or 6 at night or all night long if we need to. The shipping frequency may be zero trucks a day. There may be 400 shipments a day. 400 shipments a day is 800 trucks a day on Old Richmond Road. Back in the 80s, they increased their output from 300,000 to 800,000 tons in one year. If they did that again, are we looking at 2,000 trucks on Old Richmond Road? There has to be some checks and balances here. Finally, the accident rate mode in routes. It's at no increase in the accident rate it's shown due to the truck traffic data. That is no information. I made one phone call to Frankfurt and at least got this. Crash history, Fayette County, U.S., 25, between mile point zero, that's the county line, and 8.2. That's Jacobson Park. In 10 years, there were 549 crashes, 168 serious injuries, and 7 deaths. trucks were involved in 23 crashes and in six of the injury accidents and trucks were not involved in any of the fatal accidents this doesn't include interstate 75 it doesn't include Grimes Mill McCall's Mill it doesn't include Richmond Road inside or outside Jacobson Park or anywhere else. It's just that one eight-mile segment. Finally, I think that the quarry being there encourages illegal land uses in the area. Industrial expansion. We wouldn't have had a concrete batch plant, which I think is not there now, were it not for the quarry. We wouldn't have the asphalt batch plant there if it were not for the quarry. But I'm talking about more insidious incursions of things into this rural area. This shows some things that are prohibited in AR zone, truck repair, storage, junkyards. And then this kind of defines what is a truck repair and then what is a drunk yard. And then I think this one is a little more to the point. A vehicle storage yard does not include a yard for storage of dismantled, partially dismantled automobiles or trucks, or storage of inoperable vehicles, a parking lot. It's not a truck terminal. It's not an auto wrecking or a junkyard. Now, these apply to the property that's hard to see. But it's right there and it's very near the quarry. It was bought about 1988 by a corporation, Luau Stud. Sounds horsey, but it was actually, I believe, Alvin Haynes. At least it was Trucking Concern bought it. It's there and, again, you can see it's in an environmentally sensitive area. This was not bought for ag uses. The owners never lived on the property. There were no agriculture uses. There were few fences. It was mostly truck storage, repair, dismantling, dumping, storing building materials. Code enforcement was called several times over the years. Al Wellings used to do it regularly when he worked here and lived there until he died. And subsequently other people have reported this. I want to show this. I'll just look at the photographs. It's not really germane except that poster was prepared in 1989 for a similar hearing here. Here's the PVA record. record says it's a general farm. And then here are some recent photographs. There's the farm with trucks lined up. Trucks lined up. One truck sitting out there in the field by itself. Is this on the property that we're discussing in this case? It's adjacent to near the property that we're talking about. My point is if that quarry were not there, There would be no use for truck concerns to own 16 acres and to store their vehicles there. It's not an agricultural use. The quarry has spawned this use of neighboring properties. So it's a little more, there's a little more of a downhill cascade. There's also a lot of building materials stored there and dumping. So basically, trucks are a nuisance. They interfere with the use of the roads. They're a serious health and safety hazard. They're a special impediment to tourists and farmers and cyclists. And that Vulcan has really allowed unsafe trucks and inadequately contained loads to leave the quarry. They've allowed heavy trucks to use undesignated and inadequate roads and they really spawned some illegal and non-compatible uses in the AR zone. Hello, I'm Stacy Brown. I live on 1700 Evans Mill Road. My family's farm butts up jointly to Hidden Haven. I'm a small farmer. Farmer's next door and also down towards 99 exits. Just going back on Mr. Martin's about the road concerns. Come 3 30 of afternoon. I don't want to be on the road with the farm tractor for the sir He's already re-inner Okay, you will give us something that's different than we've already heard. I'm gonna listen to okay. All right the second thing Less than two mile from the rock where he saw in my backyard. I see it every day I look out the back door when I go to order a load of gravel I've got eight receipts here in the last three years I have them call call from Boonesboro rock quarry in Madison County and also catnip hill and Nicholasville they deliver my rock they're cheaper they they there's no benefit as they said once the benefit of the community is this rock quarry it's not another thing is you asked about mr. McCord sinkhole that's mainly what I would like to talk about if you could put this up the sinkhole of Mr. Ford. Okay. Let's see. I believe this sinkhole, that's not the right page. I had to find myself, it's so large paper. That right there is where Mr. McCord had his sinkhole fenced off. Where you see these diamond shapes back in 62, 64, this was all walked over from NCRS and mapped for the sinkholes and soil conditions and types. So there is no diamond shape right there indicating a sinkhole. but there's diamonds all the way around that meaning that opened up and exposed a cave a cavern my instance next door on my family farm back in September I had a calf fall into an 18 and a half foot hole sinkhole that was not there two years prior because I bush hogged it. This hole is as big as this room, six to eight feet in diameter. I couldn't go down to save this calf. The calf was alive and I had to call the fire department out to rescue this calf and keep me from bodily harm too. So it wasn't there two years prior. the land change vibrations something opened this up the same thing as Mr. McCord's sinkhole as well on my farm as well there's two depressions meaning sinks I guess referred to earlier what's going to happen in 50 years are those going to be exposed hose 20 plus feet in depth or not nobody wants to answer that Prior years these sinks has held water. Today they're not, even in heavy rains. They don't hold the water. My farm's right through here, and that sink is there and one right there. They are not indicated on these maps. They don't show no problems being any signs 30 and 40 years ago. Have you had your farm geologically tested to determine what causes sinkholes, sir? No. So you don't know whether it was Vulcan or not, do you? No. Thank you. But they are there. And calves are falling in it and people, every just walking through the field would find them quicker. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Ann Graff. Good afternoon. My name is Ann Graff and my husband and I have raised our family on 1751 Hillgate Drive for over 12 years. We live within the notification area on the map. I have received my training as an occupational therapist, and I'm not a water expert, but I do care about the future of the old Richmond Road corridor. I have spent quite a bit of time researching Vulcan materials, reading the Marshall Miller Report, and learning about environmental issues especially related to water farming. There are two problems that I want to address. One is Vulcan's failure to comply with the mining ordinance, and two issues related to accurately reporting water discharge from the mine. I'll be quick about the mining ordinance. It does specifically deal with drainage areas and the requirement to follow the LFUCG adopted engineering manuals. They are supposed to provide within a two-mile radius all environmentally sensitive areas and the natural areas as defined in the ordinance. As you've heard, we've asked building inspection for a vicinity map and they were not able to provide us one with the required information. This is important because of the natural springs such as the one in the notification area and the fact that there are people who live in this area that depend upon well water for their drinking supply. Next, there are important issues with respect to discharge water into the creek that I'd like to address. The State of Kentucky Division of Water admits that they do not have the resources to closely monitor limestone mines. The Clean Water Act has relied on companies to provide accurate self-reporting information. Vulcan and other companies know that there's limited capacity for monitoring. Can we trust that they're following the mandates? At the Richmond Road Quarry, I'm particularly concerned about the fact that the Vulcan quarry is approximately 1,000 feet from the Kentucky American Water Filtration Plant. When I asked the Kentucky American Water Company if Vulcan had notified them about the proposed expansion, their answer was no. Marsha Miller's report focused on Floracliff, however, it did not address the impact of mining expansion on the water plant that you have to enter in order to get to Floraclyffe. That just didn't make any sense to me. We're not only talking about our neighborhood issues, but also the water that you drink. As you can see from Exhibit B, discharge water from the quarry empties into Elk Lake Creek, which flows downstream into the Kentucky River and right to the intake at the Kentucky American Water Company's filtration plant. In your manual, I've highlighted the creek in blue so that you can better see how the flow into the river. Vulcan Materials states that they operate from a closed-loop system where captured water is stored underground, used at the surface and subsequently recycled. The surplus water is stored in pools within mined out sections of Level 1 and 2 of the underground mine. External discharge is directed to Elk Lake Creek when the inflow exceeds removal. Vulcan states this discharge only happens intermittently but I'm not so sure Vulcan is so forthcoming about this issue. Vulcan is responsible for maintaining discharge monitoring reports and these are self-reports as I've said. We went to Frankfurt and reviewed the records from the Division of Water. In the six-year period from January 2005 to December 2010, Vulcan reported no flow conditions every month in all but seven instances. We heard two weeks ago at the hearing that there is more discharge in the late winter and the early spring due to rainfall changes. Vulcan indicated no discharge every month for years from 2006 through 2008. I find this hard to believe. The following details are important. In the Marshall Miller report, a report that was funded by Vulcan themselves, on the date of the site visit they observed water pumped from the active underground mine discharging into Elk Lake Creek through a 12-inch diameter pipe. On June 1, 2010, the amount of water discharged into Elk Lake Creek was visually estimated to be 1.5 gallons per second. There had not been a significant rainfall since 11 days earlier. The field notes written by the geologist Dr. Lum which is listed as exhibit C and photographs of the discharge are exhibit D. While field notes and photographs of the discharge coming from the pipe are clearly shown in Vulcan's report, Vulcan's discharge monitoring report for the month of June 2010 has the box for no discharge checked. I have that highlighted in red on the copy of the June 2010 discharge report listed as Exhibit E. Vulcan is required to report any discharge that occurs within the month. It would be hard to believe that this is an oversight seeing that episodes of discharge are reported so infrequently. Since there is no public access to get to the discharge pipe, we rely on Vulcan to report the truth. The State Division of Water is in the process of reviewing this. In their most recent Division of Water Inspection on January 27, 2011, Vulcan was out of compliance for failure to submit the DMR report for September 2008 and for placing two times per month for sampling when only one sample was collected. This report is listed as Exhibit F. It is Vulcan's responsibility to accurately report discharges into Elk Lake Creek as required by the Clean Water Act and to ensure that they are staying within the permitted limits and not degrading public waters. Furthermore, I learned from my quarry tour that the ATS asphalt plant's discharge is commingled with discharge from Vulcan which means that petroleum contaminants could be ending up in our waterways. Vulcan's disregard for the rules was even apparent with a huge sign that stood at its entrance indicating that Vulcan was a certified wildlife area who supported the Wildlife Habitat Council. When we checked, the organization said that Vulcan had not maintained their membership for 12 years. Vulcan was told to take down the sign immediately. Well, what else is going on? We asked about blasting and explosives. The state inspector was at Vulcan this morning and asked about blasting. They said they only blasted two times of this year. I think the neighbors in this room would say otherwise. The inspector is going to look into this more. We need to trust that Vulcan is following the regulations that protect the health and safety of our community. We are not convinced of that. Please vote no to expansion. I'm going to ask my son Justin to come up. He's grown up in the old Richmond Road area and has spent some time at the Elkirk Creek at Floracliff through his AP Environmental Science class at school. Hello. My name is Justin Graff and I grew up in the Old Richmond Road area. I enjoy doing research and one of my science projects involves comparing water quality in urban versus rural streams. Currently, I am a senior at Henry Clay High School and I'm interested in biology and environmental science. Last year, in my environmental science class, we took a trip to Floracliff and got to see firsthand the Elklick Creek. Having grown up in a rural area, I enjoy outdoor activities such as riding my bike, running to the Kentucky American Water Company, and canoeing in the Kentucky River. Living so close to the water company, we are reminded about the importance of the Kentucky River as the source of our city's drinking water. I learned about the Kentucky River Watershed Watch, also known as KRWW, and reviewed the water sampling results. There are three sites on Elk Lake Creek that have been monitored. They are K610, which is known as Upstream Quarry Branch, K225, which is at the Elk Lake Creek Nature Sanctionary, and K202, which is the Elk Lake Creek Pebble Beach Confluence. You can see these on the map. The Marshall Miller report notes that conductivity is high, but states that while conductivity is elevated in the Kentucky River Watershed Watch test results, there is currently no maximum limit tested in the KDEP-DOW standards. This does not represent the entire truth. According to the KRWW, conductivity is a measure of the ability of water to carry an electric current. The high conductivity readings that KRWW has detected in Elkwick Creek are alarming because they indicate conditions in which aquatic life struggles to survive. According to the KRWW, conductivity readings above 500 micromobos per centimeter are generally of concern. In multiple readings, detected in Elkwick Creek were from 987 to 2000. If you look at the document, Kentucky River Watershed Watch Data in Elk Lake Creek 2005-2009, which is Exhibit G, you will see that at the quarry discharge point, the conductivity at site K610 was through the roof at over 2,000. As you go downstream at K225, conductivity was less at 1,372, but still extremely high. At site 202, close to the Kentucky River, the conductivity was 987, which is high. Recent studies by the EPA show that when conductivity in central Appalachian streams rises to 300, the plants and animals begin to be affected. When the conductivity of these streams goes above 500, the plants, insects, and animals are drastically affected. What I've learned is that currently the EPA is getting tough on conductivity. I've also learned that when conductivity is high, it is important to further investigate why. We need to know about the discharge water deposited into Elk Lake Creek that is going right into our drinking water supply. It makes no sense to explain the quarry when there are already concerns with the discharge into the creek. Exhibit H includes detailed reports sampling three sites at Elk Lake Creek from the Kentucky River Watershed Watch. The Marshall Miller Report talks about macroinvertebrate testing, which is where stream critters are analyzed to determine pollution effects. They say scores were relatively consistent between sites, ranging from 17 to 20, high fair to high good. In addition, analysis conducted from February 2000 through February 2010 reflect a relatively consistent pattern of similar reports. If you look at the Elk Lake Creek macroinvertebrate testing summary 2000 to 2010 in Exhibit I, it tells another story. During the period from June 2005 through 2009, the data also shows a drop into the poor and fair range. I'm encouraging you to look closely and carefully at this issue and get all of the facts. It is important to protect and preserve the water quality of the creeks that flow into the Kentucky River. Thank you. Last week, short and sweet. That's what you told me before. You said a half hour. About 28 minutes. I don't think I've got anything on there. Okay. So it will be all right. Good evening. No, it's still afternoon, so we've got some time here. Hello, my name is Lowell Yandel. I live at 7037 Old Richmond Road, just directly across the street from the intersection of Turner Station Road. This presentation will provide for you some of my personal observations and some additional research and findings about our concerns about the lack of public facilities that are required in the zoning ordinance and for concerns about our safety and the preservation of our total environment and our equity in this part of Fayette County. I'd like to hand you out some materials at this point in time. And they will go under tab 12. Yes, sir. You'll just add that in that area, I will be referring to it in as short a period of time as I know how. First let me start with a quick brief story. This occurred just this past year in late summer, emphasizing the summer, when shortly After midnight, I was suddenly awakened by the sounds of unusually close, heavy motor noise directly in front of our house. I looked out and observed several large fire fighting equipment, including a hook and ladder truck, a regular hose and pumper truck, and what appeared to be a fire chief's truck directly at the intersection of Turner Station Road directly across our street. There were quite a number of flashing red lights I think that may have gotten my attention too because they were not doing much siren work at that point in time. I thought there must be some emergency or fire in the vicinity and became alarmed about how close it was to my place in the property. I could see no flames, so I continued to observe the events for quite a little time. There started and then continued additional water and pumper fire trucks approaching and turning into and disappearing down Turner Station Road. As one truck would turn in and drive ahead out of sight, suddenly or shortly thereafter, a different water and pump fire truck would come in out of the Turner Station Road area and vacate the area. This continued for almost three hours. I was later to learn that indeed there was a house on fire right at the end of Turner Station Road, abutting the area we're talking about tonight where the proposed expansion line is. There were probably four or more of these going through the ferrying of water back and forth. And I have another quick thing to talk to you about in another fire in the same area. But the fire was successful because it burned the house down, and we were not successful in controlling the fire and saving the property and the house. The property was saved, of course, but the house was not. It burned to the ground. The reason it was not is because there are not adequate public facilities close enough to the fire that night to provide the necessary water to fight the fire. Interestingly, later I drove down and saw the house after the fire. The house was a total loss and did burn to the ground despite the great efforts of these firefighters. Of significant interest is the fact that this destroyed house is located right at the end of the property that we were talking about. You heard Mr. Jim Lurton talking about his concerns about presentation for damages. It is obvious and factual that the proposed rock mining and asphalt expansion of operations do not have adequate public facilities in the following aspect. First of all, there's no city water there. There are no high-pressure fire hydrants. There is no adequate ambulance service for that area. There is only one smaller fire truck at the closest station, and there is no rescue unit there, as well as there is a problem with adequate policing of that area as well. If there are no adequate public facilities and services for the property located adjacent to that boundary, then if you go south where the mine is and the proposed expansion is, there surely must not be the needed public facilities for the rest of the proposed areas located even more remotely to the south of where this burned house was. Any Vulcan fire that spread to our adjoining properties must be a significant concern, particularly in the hot, no outside burning band like this past year, where trees, grasses, and brush were at a tender box level and the fire was of great concern for the city in trying to prevent fires. We believe that all this area surrounding the proposed expansion of mining and asphalt plant would be at an even greater risk. We say no, no, no. We implore you to disapprove this expansion and vote no. I'd like to switch now to fires at other Vulcan locations. Just in case you might believe that these fire potentials do not exist here, I will introduce the facts to you about two other fires. Sir, can I ask the question before you go on? What do these fires have to do with what you all are going against here with Volk in mind? If you're telling me that you're talking about the public services out there, it's not there for Volk. Well, if it's not there for Volk, it's not there for anybody that lives out there, is there? If the fire department is having a problem out there putting out a fire at a house outside or on the Vulcan property, wouldn't they have the same problem with a fire out there with any house in that area? I suspect there are some fire hydrants, and I will show you the location of the fire hydrants along Old Richmond Road past the current Vulcan operations in another slide just in a moment. I don't know how the other board members feel. I don't see where this is relevant to what we're speaking about. We'll enter that in the record. We'll go to where the fire hydrants are located in the area. I don't think you can probably see them, but you have the handout there in the later part of your materials. In fact, no, you don't. I haven't passed that part out yet. Excuse me. This also goes in number 12. You will see in one of those four materials things there, the lines of the fire hydrants are located with a red insignia at the top of them. You can see them there going on down toward the mine, then there's one on past the mine slightly right there. And this is the fire station at the intersection there of Cleveland Road and Old Richmond Road. So there are some fire hydrants in the area. And you're right, sir, that probably is not of concern as a concerned neighbor, but it is of concern that there is a specific ordinance in the ordinance sections of your handout there which requires that you have adequate protection. And if we don't have it, the mine doesn't have it, and they're asking for the expansion, and we're saying that there is a greater possibility, we think, in some ways, that they could have a fire due to the fact they've already had fires. If you'll allow me to talk about two of them very quickly, I will show you that. Can you get that slide for me, sir? This is a picture of a fire that occurred in the mining operations for Vulcan in Irwindale, California, located just outside Los Angeles. For brevity, there are several salient points found in the local newspaper, and there is this picture showing the actual fire that occurred there in one of their tanks. This fire occurred just over one year ago in December and fortunately it was winter and the ground was not hot and dry of 2010. Had it been the summer in Los Angeles area you've seen way too many TV shows showing the massive fires that they've occurred out there and that could have been ignited in this surrounding areas if we were not careful again the lack of adequacy of public facilities in the proposed area makes this a serious fire issue or Vulcan and their operations and there is evidence they have had fires at their other opportunities I'm sorry there are other operations the second one and I'm on page three of my presentation occurred just outside Scottsdale Arizona and it flew over into Mesa, Arizona. When I say flew over, you'll understand that in a minute. I chose this because it was a very big fire at that Vulcan operations, and cleanup was required for miles around that operation there. Fire occurred in early spring, which was still more damp weather and not tender box conditions. Fire started at 12 o'clock noon and continued for six hours before it could be controlled and taken care of and put out. Reports show that multiple operations chemicals used in support of its mining and asphalt operations there ignited the fires and it spread to other areas and chemical containers within the mining area. The Arizona plant is very much like the one we have here. It has mining. It has asphalt production, too. According to the newspaper, the fire that I'm talking about that lasted for six hours had large plumes of black smoke and contained soot, ash, and multiple chemical particulates from the fire. Interestingly, this plume of smoke and particle fallout rained down, according to the material that I have handed to you there, on the residential and school areas located as far away as five miles from the mine and into the town of Mesa, Arizona. This layer of ash and material fell on roads, driveways, sidewalks, cars, houses, public and private swimming pools, school properties and playgrounds, and other recreational areas. So it is a major concern. One or two other quick items and then I'm going to try to leave you before they throw me out and give me the hook. I'm about ready to do that. You're ready to do that if I don't? Yes, sir. Okay. Two other significant concerns about the proposed expansion that have not been discussed. There are apparently nothing that prevents Volcom from doing two things. There are major concerns to us out there. I don't think there's anything that keeps them from relocating any or all of its heavy mining equipment and asphalt production equipment and chemicals anywhere on or within the proposed expansion of new boundaries. They can just move it around as they need to because once they get the approval, it doesn't say you can't use it. So we're concerned about that, even if it might be right up to the front of the areas where major property holders have their residences. The second thing is that if I were them, and I got this, I'd think about relocating and adding new exits and entry roads anywhere on its proposed expansion and new boundaries, including those that might wind up right at the end of the Turner Station Road and virtually connect Old Richmond Road, right in front of the houses, including mine and several others of our objectors. We say no, no, no to this request in the strongest terms possible. And also we request that you say no as well. You're the group that can protect us. As single citizens, we don't have that capability. But we ask you on behalf of all of us who have talked here today, representing our viewpoints here today, that you say no to this proposed expansion. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, that is our presenters. There are, however, a couple of individuals from the Bluegrass Trust and from the Iroquois Hunt Club and the Farm Bureau who want to introduce a letter into the record. All right. All right. My name is Walter Hillenmeyer. I live at 440 Bristol Road. I'm here today on behalf of Fayette County Farm Bureau. Fayette County Farm Bureau would like to ask you to disapprove CV 210-110, Vulcan Construction Materials LP, and their appeal for a conditional use permit to conduct underground mining of limestone in the AR zone. On property located at 7200, 7210, and 7230 Turner Station Road, we do not feel that any nonconforming industrial use should be expanded into the rural area of Fayette County. If granted, this would set a precedent for other nonconforming uses to do the same. A new mining ordinance was established by LFUCG in 1991 for good reason, and we feel that each entity should abide by these regulations. Furthermore, expansion of this operation would defy the essential principles of the rural land management and the 2007 comprehensive plans. It is our understanding that this property is a very environmentally sensitive area of the county, and there should be considered as related to the goals of the 2007 Comprehensive Plan. For this reason, for these reasons, we would like to recommend disapproval of CV 2010-110. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you, sir. John Mayer from the Iroquois Hunt Club. Thank you very much. I wish to speak regarding the proposed Vulcan blasting activity which are in three locations on the Grimes Mill Road that are are in the National Historic Register of Historic Places in Fayette County and a fourth one, a limestone structure on the Grimes Mill Road just over the county line in Clark County. Excuse me, my name is Joan Mayer and I live at 3300 Jones Nursery Lane at Lexington 40509. Grimes Mill, which is at the bottom of the valley, in the valley, where Boone Creek intersects Clark County and Fayette County is the last remaining stone mill left in all of Kentucky. In his book, Grimes Mill, Kentucky Landmark, Boone Creek, it is recorded, this is a whole history of just that one edifice, just Grimes Mill. It is a valuable property of Fayette County. Historian Harry Enoch devoted 194 pages to the history and to the lost art of the construction used in this mill and to its various uses starting in 1803 right up to the early 1920s. This is not an abandoned building, sitting empty, rotting. In 1928, the Iroquois Hunt Club bought the abandoned mill and has kept it in pristine condition at great expense and great effort to the point where it has been eligible to be put on the register, the historic register. In the interim, there have been beautiful improvements to the interior and it is enjoyed by people, members of this club from five counties who travel there often for their own entertainment. The three-story Merchant's Mill, built in 1803 for Phillips Grimes, who is sent to New England for an Irish contractor named Peter Paul who came to Kentucky with a crew of 36 Irish stone workers. The limestone was dug by hand from a quarry on the property and cut by hand to be constructed in dry stacked walls. The building is so handsome that decades after its construction, the citizens of Kentucky felt they could do no greater honor to the Commonwealth's most famous son, Henry Clay, than to use this same stone to affect the monument standing in the Lexington Cemetery. The foundation of this three-story stone building is laid on a large slab of limestone lying below the sod. We believe, as the mining operation has progressed down to other levels, the shock waves we are now experiencing are more prevalent and are of greater and greater concern to us and the maintenance of this historic building. The second vulnerable limestone structure was constructed by the Grimes family. It just stands above the Grimes mill and looks down on it. It is a typical Kentucky construction of a center hall with two large, a large room on one side and a large room on the other. was to keep the airflow going so that there was nothing behind. The windows could be thrown up. This is a typical Kentucky construction and has been kept up to date and kept in very fine condition and is valued by its owners. The third Boone Creek, the third problem we have with the mining is the historic Boone Creek which is part of the largest National Register rural district in the United States. It's a historic location that could suffer from the aftermath of underground disturbances as we've heard several times that mining and water flow are not compatible. And the fourth and the newest and youngest of all of these structures is St. Hubert's Episcopal Church which is just over the county line in Clark County. It was built in the 60s and it is also of the limestone look. It looks like a little church in England with a beautiful bell tower up high that is vulnerable to the shaking that the expansion will give us. Fifth, this area is heavily impacted by the Vulcan blasting and the fifth thing that I'm concerned about is the Grimes Mill Road itself. It is a gorgeous road. It's on the Bluegrass Drive as you've heard many times. use it to get themselves fit, to go up those big hills, to compete in tests. There are many four and five and six van horses, six stalled horse vans that travel up and down this road. I have just one last question for you. How could Fayette County put into jeopardy one of the most unique places not only in the state but possibly in the nation? and allow a corporation to, in the very least, deface it and, at the most, destroy it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. How do you want to do it? Do you want us to close or do you want us to give them a rebuttal and then close? I think probably since you're – do you want a rebuttal first or would you want to – Mr. Chairman, we do want a rebuttal, but what I would prefer to do is, this is Richard Hopgood for Vulcan Materials, what I would prefer to do is have any other members of the public, there are some folks here, Mr. Anderson, first of all, the property owner, would like to speak. We went through, I thought we would go through the applicant and anybody would want to speak on behalf of him, but we went through the applicant and then straight to the objections. So Mr. Anderson would like to speak. I think Mr. Hoffman here is a member of the public, would like to speak. There may be a couple of other public members. and then get all that in so I can rebut everything that's heard. So you're possibly thinking about having this meeting held at another date, huh? No, sir. No, sir. But there's been a lot said, and I do have... We will... And looking at the order that was supposed to have been followed and will be followed is that after each of the mine and the opposition had their opportunity to present their cases, you would have your objectors to come forth, which they have been forth. We've had the objectors here. There's a couple people who came up tapping me on the shoulder who I don't know, but they said they wanted to speak for a moment or two. That's certainly your pleasure. And then after that, we were going to have a rebuttal and closing remarks. And that's the way we're going to do it. Now, I'm going to give the respect to those people that are here three minutes each before we go to the rebuttal and the closing remarks. What's your time observation on rebuttal? I assume you're going to strictly adhere to the rebuttal. I will adhere to the rebuttal without giving you a time restriction from either side. So we get sir rebuttal. Okay. No, you don't get a rebuttal. He gets a rebuttal. I get sir rebuttal if there's some issues. Then we get sir-sir rebuttal. It will go on into another day. I'm not going to give you the last bite now, Richard. Well, the plaintiff goes last. I'm the applicant. Generally, you will have the applicant present their case, of course following the staff report, then the opposition presents their case, then the applicant has rebuttal, and the meeting is closed because rebuttal is to be restricted by its nature to what has been brought up in the opposition's case. As long as you hear the restriction aspect. When you said I'm going to open it up and give you whatever you want, then I've got to have an opportunity to protect my people. When I said that, you said you had two other people that wanted to speak. Well, I can't control what the public wants. These are people from the public now. Lewis, I've got to be able to protect my client's interest. If you're going to restrict his rebuttal to issues brought out in our case, that's fine. But if you're going to open it up to new evidence, I'm going to be here to argue. It will not be opened up. We're going to restrict it. But the point is, who do we have? Who is it wants to speak? Dennis Anderson, he's the owner of the adjoining property that we're asking for a conditional use permit for and from whom we have a lease with. He wants to speak. Why wasn't he presented when you presented your case? Because he's speaking for himself. I was presenting my case. He's got points that he wants to make as the owner. I'm not going to allow that, sir. That's fine. I can't allow that. No, sir. You had your opportunity to do this at the meeting before as far as you're presenting your case and I'm not going to allow it. So we're going to allow the rebuttal from your side. Could I have a few minutes? Could we take a quick break and let me talk to my folks? We've… I'll give you five minutes, sir. We've been going for… Give you five minutes, sir. Thank you. guitar solo guitar solo Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. guitar solo Thank you. the general public here that has comments regarding this case, I will allow you to speak. You have, and I will grant you, three minutes. So if any one of you gentlemen that was up here before, you have your time at the mic. You have three minutes as, uh, no, I think the gentleman in the back was first. Three minutes. I can't understand why you were not with the group last week is my concern. Since you are… I don't represent him. He has his own lawyer. My company is the applicant. I don't represent him. Alright. Alright. Would you give your name, sir? I'm Dennis Anderson. I'm the owner of Hidden Haven LLC. Are you speaking in opposition of this? I'm speaking in support. On the farm that's going to be... I'd like the record to note my objection in the sense that he has a pecuniary interest in this particular proceeding in the sense that his property is the subject of this application. And he is not, quote, a member of the general public. His participation should have been initially when they presented their case in chief I think he's being allowed to speak out of order and I've registered my objection. Your objection is Duly noted Anyways, I have pictures the first pictures the water on the farm. I would walked up on the farm asking if it was for sale I saw that Immediately fell in love like anytime you fall in love. It cost you money since then I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars improving this piece of land Second pictures my son you see his fishing rod his lemonade a little fire sitting on the lake Third picture you see young children fishing off the dock You see my old boat and on moat when I'm on my boat on the lake and the 430 goes off. It doesn't even create a ripple the next picture you see Children of people who work in our company on a hayride at the farm the next picture is my home away from home and around it you see the native wildflowers, the brown-eyed Susans, the wax beeswax flyer, and the cone flyer. Third picture also shows it. This is the only piece of land I own that is not for sale. Money cannot buy it. This is the only piece of land I have that will not be sold upon my death. It's left entailed to my heirs. On the next page you'll see one of our cattles we raise purebred Angus and Hereford we cross them to get the Boldys that's a little baby there I've not lost a single cow or animal to a to a sinkhole they've never drank an ounce of city water the next picture is the house that burned down and you can see the house burned down you can see the basement you can see we rebuilt the home on the same footer and foundation as the existing home the final page is what the home looks like after we get through and then there's an engineering report saying the footer and foundation was adequate there were no cracks no fissures no reason and this is the closest house to Vulcan Rock I appreciate y'all's time it's been a long day thank you thank you sir Thank You Chairman Stout my name is Knox Van Ogle and I am here on behalf of the Fayette Alliance. For the record, I would like to note our letter distributed to you much earlier this afternoon as a complete statement articulating our reasons for opposing Vulcan's application today. Speakers at the podium have covered many, many points. Many of them are in our letter, and in the interest of time, I won't go over them again. However, I would like to reiterate three key facts that are critical to this case and support the disapproval of Vulcan's conditional use permit. First, there is no local record of a valid operating permit for Vulcan's current mine on Elk Lick Falls Road. After submitting two open records requests, no comprehensive permit or related reclamation mapping operating or transportation documents were produced. Without this documentation, Vulcan is in violation of the LFUCG mining ordinance and has been operating illegally since the ordinance's passage in 1991. Further, annual inspection reports reveal repeated violations of the requirements of the ordinance itself. Second, throughout its history, Vulcan has failed to notify LFUCG of changes in its lease with the Turner Hidden Haven Farm property owners and changes in ownership of its quarry parcels. Again, without such notification, Vulcan is technically in violation of the LFUCG Mining Ordinance and operating illegally. In light of these facts, the Vulcan operation is in illegal, non-conforming use in the AR and B-1 zones. Under KRS 100 and Articles 4 and 7 of our Local Zoning Ordinance, the Board of Adjustment has no authority to expand or enlarge such a non-conforming use, and Vulcan's conditional use permit to expand its mining activities should be denied on these grounds. It is the Alliance's position that Vulcan should satisfy all the applicable requirements under the mining ordinance to restore its conformity and continue operation. Although mining and quarrying is a permitted conditional use in the AR and B1 zones, it is not an activity sanctioned by right. To allow otherwise would jeopardize the very foundation of planning and zoning in Lexington, Fayette County. And the third and final fact, as stated by many neighborhood residents today and in letters, is that Vulcan's operations have resulted in structural damage to adjacent historic properties, poor air quality, altered groundwater systems, mining in prohibited buffer zones, and traffic congestion in the area. Vulcan's failure to comply with the mining ordinance in addition to its disruptive activities is a nuisance to the neighborhood and demonstrates its disregard for land stewardship. as required by the Rural Land Management Plan, the 2007 Comp Plan One minute. Thank you. and celebrated by the adjacent Boone Creek National Historic District. Therefore, in the entrance of promoting our renowned bluegrass landscape and applicable land use authorities, Vulcan's conditional use permit should also be denied. While the Alliance supports the various conditional uses of the AR and B1 zones, they must be properly licensed and operated. Without this requirement, the expansion of illegal non-conforming uses will be the order of the day, fundamentally jeopardizing the enforceability and integrity of our zoning ordinance and, most importantly, the safety of the public. Strong planning and zoning practices are the hallmarks of our great community and, if upheld, will continue to protect our irreplaceable farmland and signature ag industries while ushering in a new era of innovative and responsible growth. Clearly, much will be gained from this approach and much will be lost from endangering it. Please deny this conditional use. Thank you. Anyone else, please? Mr. Chairman, I'm Dick Murphy. I represent Hidden Haven Fireman Dennis Anderson. I just had a couple of remarks to make to you about this. When you take your vote, I hope you'll consider the impact your vote and your message will have on other cities and counties in central Kentucky. The reason I say this is this. 90% or more of the gravel that comes from this facility is used in Fayette County. I practice planning and zoning law, as you all know, not only here but in other central Kentucky communities, and sitting through hearings in other communities is a real eye-opener, especially when they talk about regional planning, because regional planning outside of Lexington means to them often, as what I've heard said at meetings, is that Fayette County wants us to take uses they don't want to have in Fayette County. And that's a real sore point in a lot of the planning commissions and communities around this area. At least it leads to a lot of ill will. I think it's harmful to the efforts for regional planning to take a vote when we have a facility which serves Fayette County, 90% of its product goes to Fayette County, and to say, we're not going to let you expand here in Fayette County. And it's fine to say, okay, they can get their gravel from Brunsborough down in Madison County or they can get their gravel in Jessamine County. But we've heard a lot of discussion today that truck traffic is apparently unsafe and bad for road systems. And if we say that, we're saying to the other counties, well, we're going to have the trucks drive longer distances through your counties in front of properties in your county to deliver travel to Fayette County. I want to object because he's given a closing argument. They have two lawyers now given two closing arguments. He's not a participant in this hearing other than the fact he represents a gentleman who just testified. I think Mr. Todd's arguments have been closed. I'm going to let her finish this in a minute and a half, please. Thank you very much. And I think we should not say don't expand in Fayette County. We should not say get your gravel someplace else because this gravel is being used here in Fayette County for our streets or schools or hospitals. Other remarks I want to make. There is a water line in front of Dennis' property. And I've been on this property before Dennis bought it. Years ago when the Turner family owned this property, I didn't work on the mine or anything the Turner family did. But I've been on it before Dennis bought it. I've been on it after Dennis bought it. Dennis is truly a steward of this property he has improved the property he doesn't just spend money on it improving on it he puts his heart and the soul into this property and he is going to continue to be a steward and make sure this property is contributes to this community thank you very much yes sir three minutes Thank you. My name is Warren Hoffman. I think I might be unusual in the speakers here in that I don't have a dog in this fight. I have not been asked to speak by Vulcan. I don't represent them. I have no interest in them. I don't live in the neighborhood. I have however been a part of Lexington community since 1975, having practiced law here for the past 27 years, largely in dealing with mining issues, both for mining companies and against mining companies. So my interest is not about making money, and it is not about my expensive home or my horse or my farm. It's what's best for Lexington. And in this decision, I think you have to come down on Vulcan's side. We're not talking about a Starbucks here. We're not talking about a winery or even a church. I mean, this is stone that is essential for so many things that we do here. Without stone mining, you're not going to have the bridges, the infrastructure, that was written about in the Herald-Leader just this Sunday. Two articles, U.K. falling apart, city infrastructure falling apart, our president in the State of the Union infrastructure going, we know where. You need the stone. You need the aggregate. And you need it close. It's not debatable. We need this. Wish it fell out of the sky, it doesn't. It has to be wrenched from Mother Earth. Violent process. So what do we want to do? We want to minimize that impact. And there's no place that you can minimize that impact greater than keeping it where it is. You've already got the... disturbed you've got the slopes driven you got the main you got the infrastructure you got the roads there's no place I'm sorry no place you can do this that is going to have as little impact as it does right here now I've heard it's it's better to go side or go deeper and that it's it's not cost prohibitive I beg to differ as to the cost involved in driving slopes significantly deeper extract some and and maybe it's not in the interest of I'm sorry Lily the horse but I tell you who it's it's there it is in the interest of Lily the horse but the miner that has to go deeper it's not in his interest it's not safer to mine deeper I didn't hear any of that here I've heard about cyclists I've heard about horses I've heard about farms I've heard about buildings I have not heard about you know the working people in our community uh that will benefit from the severance tax the jobs the direct employment that that's that's not on their agenda they want it gone they don't want it deeper they want it gone they want it gone you know even if you go deeper you still need the roads you're going to impact the water somewhat one minute kentucky american water was personally notified by this graph they have a big investment there what I don't know how 50 million I don't know how much that water plant cost treats 30 40 million gallons a day water that goes out in Kentucky River brought back in if they were seriously concerned about the water quality or a threat to their structure by Vulcan's activities they'd be here you know in full force haven't showed up I'll be quick closing I'm sorry if you can't put one of these 300 foot you know underground next to an interstate next to a water treatment facility using existing surface I'm sorry where can you put and like I said it's it's not an option we do need it for our community so you might deny this this application and you would make a very small but very vocal and affluent segment of our community happy perhaps their horses but you would do a disservice to our community and our nation thank you thank you and now we're going to allow the rebuttal Sir, you didn't stand. I mean, raise your hands where I can see you. Please. You've got three minutes. I'll take one minute. My name is Wayne Mitchell. I live at 7601 Old Richmond Road. And I've been a resident there since December 2009. I bought the place. and I'm here to attest that recently the concussion from the blast is getting more frequent and more intense. And I don't have any history to go on except to tell you what I've experienced and I'm there every day because I've just retired and moved out there. Dust is an issue, especially when it's dry like it has been this past summer. but my biggest fear in this whole thing is if we allow Vulcan to expand level two on the property I think they stated in the last meeting that they had maybe five years left on level two at Central Rock and they stated that it's more expensive to go to level three to mine that rock what's going to keep them from going from Central Rock out here to Richmond Road with their whole activity. They won't have any logical reason not to do that if it's more economic. And that's my fear is that we'll see Central Rock phase down and Richmond Road phase up and we have to live with it. Thank you. Is there anyone else? Is there anyone else? Then we'll have the rebuttal. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for indulging the public in their brief remarks. Again, my name is Richard Hopgood. I represent Vulcan Materials Company, the Vulcan Construction Materials, the applicant in this case. and I will be as brief as I can in rebuttal. You take your time, sir. Thank you. I'm going to try to just go through a lot of this just as witnesses as they went through. I made comments. I didn't have a lot of the documents, but I made pretty good notes, I think, so I will address those one at a time. I think to get some of the smaller things out of the way, Kentucky American Water Company was on the notification list for this application. We, Balkans, had a permanent seismograph located at their facility for a number of years. They had no issue with the operations that were being conducted at our existing site. they then ask us to remove the seismograph they felt it was no longer needed. Our proposal is moving away from Kentucky American Water. So I don't know who the witness spoke to there, but they received the notice, and they've had no issues in the past with us, and we're moving away from them. So I think that's an important point to make. the Vulcan as I mentioned before is regulated by the mine safety and health administration the non coal branch of the Department of Mines and Minerals the Division of Air and the Division of Water and building inspection prior to this application being made we Vulcan had no complaints in our records from neighbors I'm gonna just I'm gonna limit it to the last five years but it goes beyond that last five years no complaints since this application was filed and believe me I think as you have seen this group is very capable of making objections and being heard they have generated three inspections in the last two weeks from those agencies first from the non coal mining branch of the Department of Mines and Minerals, and they came out the week, the Tuesday before the hearing in January. We didn't get the report until later. They, and I have a copy of the report, they have no issues, their inspection generated no problems. Here's a copy of it. The second inspection was... Do you have documents or are you just talking? No, there's a report. Yeah. The second inspection was the Division of Water. They came out the Thursday before the January hearing, and we got their report back. I have a copy of it somewhere. There are about 15 categories, and I've got an extra copy. Let me just put this in the record, and it can be passed around while I'm speaking. I think I have an extra copy here. Mitzi Delius was an inspector. She and somebody, I think, from the Urban County government came out. They have an inspection report where they went through a series of different items, and they're all in the report. I'll just read no I mean the permit no violation do we have a permit no violation do we have a best magic practice pant no violation we've developed and implemented that plan is the best management plan required by these regs consistent with general guidance there we we have developed all the plans there are no violations there there's a 15 categories I I won't go through every one of them, that they covered. We received, as a result of that inspection, a, quote, letter of warning, which under the Division of Water Regulations doesn't exist. We were told they issued this because of the publicity and the objections from the neighbors. There were two items, paperwork items, that they found and told us to correct. One was we had a discharge in September of 2008. They said they didn't have a report from us of the results of that discharge. Jim DeSink can correct me if I'm wrong. He's right here. He's the representative of Vulcan. He said that their records show they get a four-part form from their testing lab. Their records, two of those parts were torn off. They tear the top two off. They sent them to Frankfurt along with a report that we fill out. Our records show we sent it. They showed they didn't have it, but the report showed we were in compliance. That's one, a paperwork violation. The second one was in one month, I can't remember the month, Jim, but May of this year, we had one discharge of water under our permit in the month of May. The form, the requirements we have under our permit are that we are supposed to test twice a month if we discharge two times or more in a month. In the month of May, we discharged one time, we tested that, and we sent it in. Our form says frequency of testing two-slash-month. The gentleman that filled out our report did not correct the fact that the frequency of that month was one time because we only tested once. Can I ask you a question? Yes. So they had a picture showing that there was a discharge on June 1st, and they said that the last major rainfall was 11 days before that. So are you suggesting that there wasn't a discharge on the 1st, or I don't understand how there could be a discharge on the 1st and 11 days after rainfall and no discharge in between? Well, I'm Jim DeSink, Vulcan Materials. What I can tell you, and obviously that was the first I've solved what they've said, but as I can tell you, we did discharge in May of that year. Rainfall is really not a measure of when or when you do not discharge. The level of the water that we store underground and to the point where we feel, if you remember May of 2010, there was a significant amount of rainfall. We got five or six inches in this area. Nashville had 11 inches. That's a huge amount of surface water coming at you. In late May, we did go ahead and start discharging some of the water to bring it down. Now, I don't have in front of me how many days they discharged and all that type of stuff, but under the reporting requirements, when they did discharge and they discharged once. Now, again. So a discharge could last several days. Exactly. That's the key. The duration really is not, if you turn it on, turn it off, turn it back on, that becomes the multiple discharges. So you can have two discharges in two hours, or you can have one discharge that may last over a month's time. So again, a paperwork deficiency. Not a notice of violation, a quote letter of warning which does not exist. The third and last inspection occurred this morning. The Kentucky Blasting Regulatory Authorities came out this morning and looked at our blasting records based upon a complaint from, do you remember the name, Jim? Go ahead. Yeah, sure. Ms. Brown. Ms. Graff, I'm sorry. They reviewed our blasting records. We had two – they were told we blasted, I think, every month, every day in the month of January. Was that right, Jim, what you were told? We blasted two times in January. On the 7th, when I was there, to see, experience a blast before the board came out, and on the 21st. We blasted two times in the month of January. The inspector had written down the wrong date, January 24th. He called back. This graph was corrected, and that's it. We blasted twice in January. I think there was a statement or letter that we said we only blast on Fridays. That is incorrect. We blast once a day, Monday through Friday if necessary, but we don't blast every day. We certainly don't blast just on Fridays. That's just simply incorrect information. but we won't get a report for a couple of weeks, but we were advised that there were no issues with our blasting records. And they're looking to see if you're blasting in compliance with state law. I'm going to have Mr. Lust, the blasting expert, talk to you in response to many of these neighbors that have talked about blasting issues. In fact, that's probably the best way, if that's okay with you, Mr. Chairman, is let the expert talk. I'm not in a position to challenge what individuals say they felt or experienced many years ago. Mr. Lusk, if you all have questions about that, he's probably the best one to answer that. But our position is, and it always has been, that we are regulated by the state under blasting regulations and that we have limits about how much vibration we can generate. We are well under those limitations. Very often the blast that you all experienced on January 21st did not register on our seismograph. It was less than .05 when the state standard is 2.0. I think you can go on with your rebuttal, and if there were questions from the board up here relatively to the blasting, then we might bring him forward. Just do that in that part. That's perfectly fine. There was a reference to Columbia Gas. some issue about their gas line. I think they had actually contacted the staff early on in this investigation. I was told by Ms. Honaker that she sent a letter to the staff. She emailed me a copy of the letter where Columbia Gas said that they have reviewed the Columbia Gas Engineering Services receive the Prince drawings of the aforementioned development for view of potential conflicts. Columbia owns and operates gas line pipelines. These facilities lie outside their post-work area and will not be affected. I think, did you get a copy of this, Jim? I think the staff has it. I have an unsigned copy. She emailed to me saying, this is what I'm sending to the staff. So you have Kentucky American Water, major facility on one end, Columbia Gas on the other end, neither one of those entities that have technical expertise have no issues. MSHA violations were mentioned. I think the number is probably correct. I think there are roughly 50-something. We probably get, you have to understand MSHA violations, we probably get an average of about 50 a year. Our, won't you come on up, Jim, our competitors get more than we get. One of the, there's a quarry in Gallatin County. One of the members of, along with that, was one of the mining ordinance members. His quarry had 250 MSHA violations. But you've got to understand what an MSHA violation is before you can pass judgment on that. And I'll let Jim just tell you briefly about that. Yeah, I think there was a mention over the last five years, There was 59, I believe, was the number they addressed. That's probably fairly close to accurate. We get inspected four times a year by MSHA. That's usually about a five-day inspection, so they're with you for a month at a time, over a year's time. In that inspection, it's very detailed. The things that you or I typically live in this world day to day don't really deal with what in the mine. If you have a trash can that the lid is slightly up on it, If it's not a particular type of trash can, it's very similar if you've been exposed to a lot of OSHA type stuff. MSHA stuff's the same way. It's not unusual for any mine to get some citations. Now, what you have to do is you have to compare that to everyone else in the industry and around your area. Our record around the area, which, again, we can give you that information, or it's on the website as well, is we're at below average to just average of what any other mine would be. So there is no exceptional high. You don't want any citations. Our goal is zero, but the reality of it is it doesn't work that way. You do get some. I want to talk about the non-technical part of blasting again. We did receive a complaint from Mr. Lerton in August 20th of 1998. Vulcan, the one thing that's ingrained in their company, if they get complaints, They write them down, and they respond to them. The complaint, I'll put it in the record, says that Mr. Lurton called at 4.59 shortly after blast, said his house shook, action taken, told him on Thursday we would do what we could to find the cause, if any, of the violent shot he said he experienced. That shot was 14 holes drilled into the floor at location. It says IL-5. vulcan then had a shot on august 24th four days later at the same location they drilled 10 holes in the floor but shot three headers that's at the same time that's a shot going out instead of down that would actually be a more larger shot than what he called and complained about the Dean Durbin was the person who took the complaint and made the notes that he called Mr. Lurton back to ask him about it and he said it was hardly noticeable. Here's, if you want to, I'll just pass it. Put that in the record. Thank you. My point again is we will, we do respond to complaints. We haven't gotten them. That's the issue. And if my neighbor is speeding up and down the street, my neighbor is playing loud music at night, I'm going to go talk to my neighbor after a point and say, I'm having a problem. I'll give him some time, and if he doesn't correct it, I'm going to go complain to somebody. We've not gotten those complaints. So that goes to, I think it goes to what has been said. The, sir, you are out of order. Thank you. Can I ask him that question? Actually, I'll just pass it on to you if you'll give it back to staff. I mean, I'm reading off. You can see it. there's been a lot of discussion about coring in an agricultural zone coring I think the zoning ordinance was amended about the time the mining ordinance was enacted and coring was actually was in an agricultural rural zone as a conditional use before the mining ordinance after the adoption of the mining ordinance, they made coring a conditional use in every zone in Lexington and left it in an agricultural rural zone. In fact, if you look at the zoning ordinance, which I assumed you'll have a copy in the record, Jim. I mean, I've got a copy I can put in. It's a conditional use in an ag buffer zone. It's a conditional use in an ag natural zone. If it were that incompatible, it would have been prohibited in those zones. The council had an opportunity. They didn't do it. We have a facility at Georgetown Road that is adjacent to the University of Kentucky's agricultural farm where they have livestock there. In fact, we made an exchange with them of land back in 2008 that was the subject of a conditional use permit here. We're right next to the U.K. Not only do they not have an issue with us, they entered into a land swap with us that gave them more land pushing them closer to our quarry. So you all will have to sort out some of these inconsistencies, and I trust that you'll do it. There are many things that were said here that I'm not going to go through and try to rebut one by one in the interest of time. Those are things where people start out saying, I'm not an expert, and then proceed to give you an expert opinion. I think, Mr. Stout, you picked up on a number of those. As far as the truck tarping, it is our policy. And, Jim, you might just want to come up. You're the company manager for this area. But our policy is to require tarping. Just give them the policy, Jim. Yeah, policy is there's signage right there where they come out the gate. They're also, most of the loader operators try to watch for that type of thing. The requirement is you have to be tarped when you come out the gate. We do require siding and tailgate on anything we load. But, again, once they drive off of our property, this is private individuals, they're on public roads, but coming off a property we try to do everything possible, and we do, like I said, include signage and watch for it and maintain. And if we know you don't have a tarp or sideboard, we will not load you. That would be a decision they'll make at the plant. There were a lot of pictures taken, black and white, things that didn't have dates. I'm going to just tell you that our policy is, again, if we get a complaint, and we encourage people if they see a truck driving up and down the road, leaving the quarry, a lot of those you couldn't tell where they were coming from. I went out January 7th. There was a truck from Harrod Concrete coming down the road. I mentioned it to Mr. Dusinke. He said, we don't have a concrete plant. So that came from somewhere else. It was going down Old Richmond Road. We can't control every truck on Old Richmond Road. I think Craig Morgan, come up here for a second, Craig. I don't know if you, did you swear in? Craig is an engineer here in town. I hit him. We didn't do a traffic set. I had Craig pull off accident information on Old Richmond Road. Craig told me one of the breaks from 1990 through 2011, there was. As it was characterized in the Kentucky State Police, I'm sorry, Craig Morgan, an engineer here in Lexington, the Kentucky State Police database had only listed one large truck accident. Now, that goes, you know, it depends on how the accident report is written up and how it gets characterized. In another search that I did in that same time period, six dump trucks were listed from a 20-year period as having accidents on Old Richmond Road, which varies somewhat to some of the accidents, the higher accident rates that were given earlier. You got this information off the Kentucky State Police website. Which is fed by local police as well. All right, I'm going to slow down a minute and talk about what I think is a very crucial point and one that was talked about at length. I will agree with Ms. Martin. I am here, and I was around back in the late 80s. I do hope there's a greater reward. I hope it doesn't come for me for a while. But here I wasn't involved in my recollection in a lot of the detail of the mining ordinance, but I was aware of it. And there was a representative for Vulcan Materials on that. I think his name was Mack Badgett. He's no longer with the company. He rose actually to a very high level in the company. I think the executive vice president, number two position, the company's retired and gone. There was probably another person who was there. so Vulcan did participate in the mining ordinance. So that's correct. The ordinance is very comprehensive. It is, and I don't know if you have a copy of that in the record. The mining ordinance has 36 definitions, 59 separate requirements involving vicinity map, mine quarry plan, reclamation plan, and then operations description. and each of those 59, I'm counting 1A, 1, 2, 3, 2A, that's 59. There are multiple parts within those. It is a very detailed, lengthy ordinance. It is not a picture of clarity. If you read it, I've read it frontwards and backwards, and I'm going to talk about that. But I think the key and first point to go over is my complete disagreement with Ms. Martin's characterization of what the ordinance requires. And we currently operate, Vulcan has an existing mining permit issued by the building of inspection. I have a copy of it right here. There's been questions that we don't have it. Here's a copy of it. the fees we paid, we operate under a current non-revoked mining permit issued by building inspection pursuant to this ordinance. There was, and what this amounts to today is a collateral attack on a permit that is valid until somebody determines it's not valid. There is a procedure for determining the issues that anybody would have about the building permit. And your zoning code, it provides that there's an other appeals section of the zoning code. I think it's in 7-something. I can find it, and I've got a copy. I'll put it in the record. but it basically says if you're injured or aggrieved by an action of the building inspector, you can appeal to the Board of Adjustments. It comes back to this body as an appeal. To attack it collaterally in a conditional use permit is not the legal approach to challenging our validly existing mining permit. There was, and I'll get a copy of that and put it in the record so I don't slow down and go looking for things. There was a question that I think Mr. Hume could not locate in his file a copy of the original application. I believe that was the statement. I went to the surveyor's office, Endress Engineering, that prepared the original mining permit application. I have a copy of it right here. I don't know when it was filed, but I talked to Mr. Hugo Endress. He said he worked on it. He knows it was filed because he operated from that point forward. It covers the points in the mining ordinance. This is actually the original copy. I'm going to go ahead. I've made a photocopy. I want to put that in the record. But one was filed. It may have been filed June 18th instead of June 12th. I don't know. I can't challenge that. The form said submitted. You know, I don't know if that's what it means. It's what it means. But we're 20 years later, six days, 20 years later. Don't think that's a relevant issue. Mr. Hopgood, I'm here on the board right in front of you. Can I ask you a question about what you're talking on currently? It looks like you're supposed to have a conditional use permit to be operating this mine under 252-91. I don't agree with that. I do not think that we need a conditional use permit to operate. We, Vulcan's existing operating, we need one for the Anderson property. That's why we're here. But we do not need one for our property. In 252-91, it says you're supposed to reapply for a permit if you have a change in ownership or if you change the amount of production of the mine by 10% in a year or if you alter the process, like going to a different level, I would assume that would be a major change. And each reapplication requires a trip to the Board of Adjustment in 252-91. So are you saying that you're in compliance with 252-91 or because no one filed an appeal to building inspections decision to offer you a permit that you didn't need to do these things? Let me put this on the Elmo if I could so we can get the exact language up here. Does our legal rep have a comment relative to that? I think I'll wait and see if Mr. Hopgood addresses the issue. Section 8-3, Applicability. Section 3, reapplication shall occur if the owner-operator proposes to alter the activities set forth in the conditional use permits by any of the following. We don't have or need a conditional use permit for our existing operation. We've been there since 1958. We were there when coring was a permitted use in an ag zone. We were there when it became a conditional use. Under your zoning ordinance, it's called a conforming use. If it's permitted before a change in zoning and then a conditional use after, it's a conforming use, contrary to what the Farm Bureau said. So reapplication. Can I ask you a question? Yes. Are you sure it's not a non-conforming use because you're following the old rules? No. There's actually, actually, I've got a copy of it. The zoning statutes specifically says a conforming use is not, do you have it over here, Heather? is not a nonconforming use. If I could just make a general statement. Under the state statutes, which certainly cannot be superseded by a local ordinance, a use that was legal at the time that it commenced cannot be eliminated by land use regulations. It is grandfathered in as a legal nonconforming use. But it's a nonconforming use. So in order to – but doesn't it have to comply with the new rules in order to – That is correct with respect to the regulations of the mining and quarrying ordinance because that is not part of the zoning ordinance. But that mining and quarrying ordinance cannot require them to come back and get a conditional use permit for something that is a legal nonconforming use under state law. Can we put this on the ELMO here? I guess, I mean, are you taking it? Well, let's don't take it. Let's just read what the ordinance says. This is 4-7 of your zoning ordinance. It's on the ELMO. Conditional uses are not nonconforming uses. any existing princely permitted use at the date of the adoption or amendment of the zoning ordinance, which would thereafter require a conditional use permit, that is, the Anderson property, shall be deemed a conforming use, but any enlargement or replacement of such use shall require a conditional use permit. We are asking for a conditional use permit. But our existing operation is not a nonconforming use. There is a body of law out there, and I've got some cases I can cite to you that distinguish in the nonconforming use area, and we're not a nonconforming use, one that was permitted before zoning and then prohibited after. That's a nonconforming use. Coring was not prohibited after they changed the zoning ordinance. So in your view, going to level two is not an enlargement. No. Only going to different properties. We're asking for a permit for that, correct. there's a body of law out there, even in the non-conforming area, that says that quarrying or mining by its nature is an expanding business or operation. It diminishes every day. If you had a quarry and it became a non-conforming use, you can still mine out the property that you own because otherwise you would stop them on the day they passed the ordinance. by its nature is an expanding business. Most conforming uses deal not with the land, but with the building and what's going on. In a quarry, it's the land that's the issue. So let's see, we're back. Can we switch back to Section 8-3? So it is our position that reapplication is not applicable to us at the existing site because it applies to if the owner-operator proposes to alter the activities set forth in the conditional use permits. For example, if you were to grant us a conditional use permit for the Anderson property, and then we did one of the things A through H in three, then that would require a reapplication. And there's a whole procedure for reapplication. What we've done, we filed our original application in 1992 sometime, And we file for a reissuance of that every year by supplying building inspection with an updated mind map showing what's happened in the last year. That's a reissuance. It's not a reapplication. So, and let me put up 8-4, Jim. because this goes to the next point. Do you have a, is 8-4 on that page? Oh, I'm sorry. All right, I think it just, it helps everybody because a lot of people talked about a lot of things that are in the ordinance, but I'm going to, But they're incorrect when you read the exact language of the ordinance. First, it says prior to any mining or quarrying on a property, the owner shall submit an application for a mine quarry permit to Division of Building Inspection, not prior to asking for a conditional use permit. it the the zoning ordinance says that minor coring of metallic minerals is a condition of use but only when the proposal complies with the requirements of the mining coring ordinance and the conditions requirements set forth therein it is our position and interpretation that means that you rule on the conditional use whether or not we're if you turn to the to the next page it says are three findings you make that we won't be a public nuisance, blah, blah, blah, reasonable degree of reclamation and proper drainage, which we talked about in our application testimony, and that we have not had a permit revoked or bond forfeited. Those are the three findings that you are required to make with regard to quarrying. The mining ordinance should be a condition that as a condition, if you find those three things then as a condition you would require that we comply in all respects with the mining ordinance we get a conditional use permit we go and file an application with mr hume who i don't think would even review our application if we didn't have a right from the board to mine the property um you ask him that i don't you know i assume that would be his answer i don't know um and then if And that's exactly when we were here in December of 2008, and that's exactly what happened on Georgetown Road, and it's what's been recommended by the staff. They have a condition that's recommended that says that the facility shall at all times comply with the provisions of the mining coring ordinance as well as federal and state regulations pertaining to mining. The staff recommended that as a condition. They recommended that at Georgetown Road back in 2008. The board approved the request for a conditional use permit for 57 acres of property owned by the university. We had existing rights on all the other property. And that was the procedure that was followed there. I'm going to put these minutes in the record. And that's what we're doing here. If you continue to read on in the paragraph, and what I think Ms. Martin alluded to, And here's where things get, in my view, unclear about what it says. It said that where new and or expanded uses are requested, the Board of Adjustment may impose specific requirements and conditions relating to the plans for such an operation as defined the zoning ordinance. That's what we're doing here. We've got certain conditions. We've agreed to some. We've asked for one change. It says, upon approval by the Board, approval by the Board of what? To give that a consistent reading, it is our position upon the approval by the Board of a conditional use permit, then the Division of Building Inspection may approve a permit application, but not until the Board approves the CUP for our property. It does not say, in our opinion, that... Mr. Hopkins, is this an expanded use, or is this just the same use in an expanded area? the testimony was and it still is that it is we're not expanding our existing operation all the equipment all the processing all the storage everything we're doing is going to occur on the property that vulcan owns which is an existing valid right and the only thing we're doing is extracting stone from the Anderson property and bringing it back to our property to process. That is not going to result in any change in the surface use, any change in anything other than it's a different source of supply of the stone, where it's not resulting in an increase in production or truck traffic. In fact, one of the conditions that we agreed with the staff's conditions except for condition 7, we proposed and we talked about it in January in alternative. It said that Vulcan shall be permitted to concurrently mine level 2 on the Hidden Haven property and construct a decline to level 3 on the Vulcan property to prepare for mining of level three of the Vulcan property if we decide to do that, but we won't mine them both at the same time other than to create a decline. It takes a number of years. The testimony has been three, four. This is not rebuttal. He's given a closing argument. It has been for the last ten minutes. If he wants to rebut issues, let him rebut them point by point. But he gets two closing arguments if you allow this to continue. I am rebutting what Ms. Morton said about how she interprets the mining ordinance. Now, both of you are talking to a non-attorney here, as you well know. And in order for that to get cleared, I'm going to ask our legal advisor over there where we are with this. in your bylaws what the hearing procedure provides is the presentation by the staff the applicant shall then have a reasonable time to present his or her case after which any protestant will be given a reasonable time to present his or her case his or her or its case and then the applicant shall then be entitled to rebut It then indicates that anyone who's testifying can be questioned by the applicant, a protestant, or a board member, and that then the board shall make its decision after the close of the hearing. That's what your bylaws state, that you have the staff, the applicant, the protesters rebuttaled by the applicant, and then the board makes its decision. And in my estimation, he's doing fine. I don't have any problem with it. I was answering Mr. Glover's question about expansion. I thought, I mean, I may have given a longer answer than I should have or that you needed, but let me just move on. I'm off that point. But so the next point I want to make that where I disagree with Ms. Martin's interpretation of the mining ordinance is the 100-foot buffer area. and if you read section 11 it's probably need to put that up Jim I guess I think I can say it but let me just grab it here it's page 10 of 14 You got it there? I don't see it. It is Section 11. Jim, can you move it up? Sorry. Buffer zone. Except for operations with valid existing rights, the mine or quarry shall set back a distance of 100 feet. If you go to our position that Vulcan Materials' existing operation is a valid existing right, both legally, and I'm going to say this, you cannot enact a mining ordinance and change what is Kentucky zoning law. It's a very important point. And we have a zoning ordinance that is you have to go through a process to change that. And that starts with the planning commission, and then it goes to the city council for final adoption if you're changing the text. What is adopted here in the mining ordinance is an exercise of the city council's police power. And I think the best way to explain that is that zoning tells you where you can have a bar and how much parking you have to have. The police power or an ordinance governing bars tells you how late you can keep that bar open. I think we have not challenged this ordinance. In talking to the folks, I do remember this. We had a lot of discussion with them about whether or not this ordinance exceeded the power of the city council, but we're not here arguing that because the law is an ordinance. Once it's passed, it's a law until it's changed. But there's a big element of this ordinance that is land-use oriented, and it did not go through a process to be a zoning ordinance. And you can't change Kentucky law about what our vested right is on our property through an ordinance like this. Can I just ask you to clarify? So you're saying that you're existing conditional use, so you're okay. You don't need to. You're not in nonconforming use. Okay, and I'm not quite sure. Are you saying you're complying with the mining law, that you do comply with the ordinance, or that you don't comply with it? We have made application and annually asked for reissuance of a mining permit. We have proceeded, no, there's no factual dispute about that. We have proceeded under the ordinance because it is a law until somebody says it's not. And so since you showed us this, your position is that you have complied with the mining ordinance. Our position is we have complied with the mining ordinance until building inspection tells us that we haven't and then until an appeal might be taken of that, which would come back to this group. That's the procedure. Okay, and if you didn't comply with it, what you didn't comply with was the reapplication when you went to level two, and that's because it's your position that that wasn't expanding, so you didn't need to reapply. Right, we did not reapply. So you're now reapplying. You are now applying because you're expanding, and that is consistent. and you're saying that you didn't have to file the actual mining application until after you get the conditional use permit. So there's no. And subject to you all making us comply with the mining ordinance. If we don't, then it's like violating any other condition that you impose in a conditional use, that we have to answer for that. And there's a procedure in the zoning ordinance where the building inspector gives us a notice of violation. I did not see a notice of violation dragged out. But anyway, I heard somebody say it, but what I saw were letters back from building inspection or from the mining engineer saying that they've reviewed this stuff, you need to do A, B, C, D, and E. As far as I know, we did that, but we didn't get any violation that I've seen from building inspection where there's a whole provision on that. They give you a notice of violation and a time period to cure it. If you don't, then we can be shut down, we can be fined. There's all kinds of it's in the end of your zoning or mining ordinance. Enforcement of conditions and inspections, Section 8-9. You have lots of powers. And if we disagree with the building inspector just like these folks here disagree, then they can file an appeal and bring it here to you all. And then if somebody's not happy with that, then you go to court. But that's the one, two, three of it. But to have you all, what they're asking you to do is to step in the shoes of the building inspector and wade through 59 elements of a mining ordinance to give approval of that mining ordinance, then if you do that, let's just follow that to its logical conclusion. Closing argument again. It's not rebutting points. Will you just please stick to the report, please? Okay. That's fine. I think I've answered. Hopefully, for some more, I've answered your question. A valid existing right is defined in the ordinance. It is a legally binding deed. We had a deed to this property before the zoning ordinance was changed, making it a conditional use. As of the date of the enactment of this chapter, December 12, 1999, and this is where, again, it gets really fuzzy in my view. There are two things that you have to comply with that, in fact, if you read this to its conclusion, a lease can be a validly existing right. We had a lease of the Homer Turner property in 1986. Mr. Anderson bought that property at foreclosure and took it subject to the lease. So that lease has continued on since 1986. and you established that and one of the following standards under the ordinance. The minerals are both needed for and adjacent to the validly authorized mining quarry. That's the Anderson property. Under the lease, they're adjacent to us and we need them or we wouldn't be here asking for them. We testified to that in the January hearing. Or that we, the entity, that's the applicant, had made a good faith effort to obtain all necessary state and federal permits as of the date of enacting this chapter. We've had permits from all the state and federal authorities to operate this quarry since its inception. And then the other thing, you can tell me, it says, or as the date the prohibitions became effective. What prohibitions? It doesn't say what that is. so I think the purpose of that is a concern about the city that their mining ordinance might be construed to have taken somebody's property and then they have to pay you for it like a condemnation and they put that in there to protect themselves if somebody says it's a taking wait a minute no it's not you're vested I think that's the only way I can read that and make any sense out of it those that is our rebuttal and let me just real quick check real quick Mr. Stout to see one just this small point but it's it's something that seemed to be belabored there is a there is a requirement I think in the ordinance that you show contours of in the mine property and I don't know if you know much about maps and contours, but there are lines that show you changes in elevation. Typically, you see them, because this thing covers surface quarries as well. That's a lot of, I think, the ambiguity in this ordinance is that there are some things that deal with surface quarries, they don't distinguish. But if you do a contour that, say, every line is a five-foot change and contour, that mine floor is flat. It's flat like this. Your contour lines, you would have nothing but a map full of just tiny lines trying to show what the elevation is if there's a slight change in the floor. The engineers that work for Vulcan said that doesn't make sense. You're not going to see anything. It's going to be a bunch of lines. They contacted building inspection and said it makes more sense and gives you what you want to know by doing spot elevation. So that's what they were putting in there. At this point, the elevation is this. At this point, it's that as opposed to trying to see 1,000 lines to see a one-foot change over 500 feet. It defies logic to say that building inspection shouldn't have some ability to say we're trying to get at what the ordinance is requiring and we think that makes more sense than trying to show tiny contour lines all over the map. I think Mr. Buckner doesn't work for Vulcan anymore. I think he probably was confused. I think there was a letter about the buffer, and I think they probably went back and said the valid existing right is not subject to the buffer. I think Mr. Buckner wanted to do 50 feet anyway to make sure that we didn't mine off our property. All that mining off our property, that was done before the late 80s hearing. We haven't mined off our property. I think that they're confusing mining within the 100-foot buffer, but we're not subject to that 100-foot buffer, although in the conditional use permit map, Jim, you had the other one? I'm sorry. We have agreed on the Anderson property, and this is, you know, we asked for 100 and something acres. The staff came back and said 55 because they felt that was sufficient, you know, for this application, and we agreed to it, and it's right here. And we agreed to a 200-foot buffer on Elk Lake Creek as a condition. We've agreed to a 200-foot buffer on the other side. So on the property we're asking for approval on, we have agreed to those conditions, even more than the mining ordinance would require. So there was a statement that I think Mr. Lerton's property borders the property that we're asking for a conditional use permit well i guess it does technically mr anderson's property goes way up here mr lerton's property it joins it way up here it doesn't join any of the property that we're asking for cup for it's all surrounded by uh by mr anderson's property or the highway right-of-way um we did we did back in the late 80s when we mined off of you know under the sanctuary we also got up under the right-of-way some we got over on mr turner we were off in three spots which i think indicated that we weren't doing a good job at that time of exactly controlling but we haven't mined off our property since then i haven't seen a map as soon as we did. With regard to just one point before we get the blasting expert to answer your questions, we, blasting under state law, we're required to find the closest property that we don't own. That's called an uncontrolled structure, and it's up here on Elklick Falls in the corner of our property. That structure is what we design our blasting plan from. We design it to, with state law tells you how many pounds of material you can use based on your proximity to that structure. And then getting very technical, how many seconds there has to be between, you have 14 holes that go off, they go off milliseconds apart. Eight, ten milliseconds sometimes. Blink of an eye is 400 milliseconds. Let me ask you a question. Yes, sir. Ken, the blasting procedures that you all follow out there at Balkan, are there dangers of the blasting even though you may not hear it or you may feel some vibrations? Are there dangers of these sinks or sinkholes being farmed and water loss from agricultural areas, farms out there due to the blasting? I would probably, if it would be okay, like to have Mr. Lusk answer that. If that is, the state guidelines for, I can tell you this, on how much vibration we can generate, actually we're not even required to size them a graph under state law. State law says you use the scale distance formula. You find the closest residents you don't own, and then you design how many pounds you use, and how quick those shots go off. We seismograph as an extra precaution. We're not required to do that. We have a permanent seismograph at that house. The day you all were out there, that seismograph did not trigger. We do it as a backup. We're not required to do it. But to answer your question, the state blasting regulations are designed, based on that scale distance formula and seismograph to not cause damage to property. And that's a point we've tried to make throughout this, that we have all these permits, we comply with them, and there are avenues for people to complain. We weren't getting complaints, none of these agencies were. and we can't regulate you can't regulate a business on what somebody feels or senses you have to have factual stuff if I can I think Mr. Luss will come up probably somebody's going to have some blasting questions I'll let him deal with that I don't know about sinkholes Braden I mean let me just I'll just wait I'm not going to try to control what you all said you might want to ask him questions you know we have all the public facilities I think that came up that we don't use any water other than what we recycle our waters for our office we have a septic tank, we have electricity I think if there were an asphalt plant fire I think you're going to need foam and not water for that somebody says you don't put water on a grease fire it just spreads it I think asphalt is essentially some kind of grease. And there is a fire station right down the road at Cleveland. And I think Mr. Jackson is right here in the glasses. He spoke in January. He is a geologist with a hydrology background. He can talk about sinkholes and rebut what was said. I'm gonna just say that we would disagree with that and I can bring him up and let him just give you a brief response to that I'd like to because it was a big part of the presentation well it's up to you mr. chairman if you don't think it's does any of the board members have any concerns about the lasting procedures relative to the damage around and we will we will let you finish your rebuttal in can I just ask my client they've got any I think I'm about done but that's all we have mr. chairman all right we thank you thank you And we have heard from all parties involved in this case. And I am going to, first of all, say that the board is here for a reason. We're here to hear all concerns involving cases that involve businesses and people who live in this community. And at times it is not easy for us to make a determination that everybody is going to like. In most cases that's the way. But we hear everything. We hope that everybody brings their concerns before us because it is important for us to hear and listen. And it is also important for us to make a determination based on what we've heard and based on evidence that has been submitted to this board. This board has been very, very prudent in sitting here and listening to everybody. And we understand the importance that's on both sides of the street. So we have listened to you today. Some of you, we've listened to you a long time. And that has not been a very normal position for this board for the years that I've served here. But we've let you talk because we think this is important. And we felt like what you had to say is important. And we're going to make a determination in this case. And now that we've heard the rebuttal and we've heard all of the testimony from everyone, we're going to declare that this board meeting is, as far as the presentations are concerned, are over. We get to give closing argument, I assume. What's your closing? Just a two-minute break. Two-minute break? Please. I've been sitting here, too, with my glass. We'll give you two minutes. I don't think we need closing. We've had eight hours of hearing. I don't think we need closing. I think they're expecting it in five minutes.