Back in action to stop mining project

The location in which a special meeting was held for homeowners living in the Cedar Crest area that is threatened by Lafarge North America’s mining interests was an appropriate one.

New Hope Baptist Church.

“To have hope, we must take action and remind people whenever we can that we are against this,” said Lavonne Spicer, president of Cedar Crest, Swearingen, Fairview Concerned Citizens, an organization opposed to any mining in the former Cedar Crest Dairy estate, which is next to 1,400 homeowners, several churches and Elm Grove Elementary School.

More than 160 people were present at the meeting Thursday night, where Spicer and longtime Concerned Citizens activist Jim Thompson spoke. A proposal from Lafarge to rezone the property for mining is set to go before the Sugar Creek Planning and Zoning Commission Sept. 18. The commission will give its recommendation to the board of aldermen, who will make the final decision at an undisclosed date whether Lafarge should be allowed to mine Cedar Crest.

Lafarge tried to rezone the tract for mining in 2006, but the Sugar Creek Board of Aldermen voted 3 to 1 against. The county turned down similar requests in 2001 and 2003 before the area was annexed to Sugar Creek. The alderman who voted in favor of Lafarge, Joseph Kenney, is still on the board while the alderman who was the deciding vote, Chuck Mikulich, has been replaced by Patrick Casey, who defeated Mikulich in April.

“Joe told me it was not an easy decision for him,” Spicer said. “He said he thought Lafarge had addressed the homeowners’ issues. Nothing could be further from the truth. They lied to him, and they’ve lied to us.”

Lafarge has been blasting beneath The WinterStone Golf Course the past eight years, where they are creating an underground storage park for Limpus. Once completed, Lafarge will have subsurface access to 167 acres of land rich in Bethany Falls limestone. The company crushes the limestone into aggregate that can serve many purposes including paving highways.

According to Spicer, the same issues continually present themselves to homeowners living close to the WinterStone Golf Course, including dust violations, excessive blasting and dump trucks turning left on Kentucky as a shortcut to U.S. 24. Many of those living in the Cedar Crest area already experience side effects from the WinterStone project to the south, including cracked foundations.

“They have continually ignored the original agreement they had with the homeowners, which makes me suspicious of any new agreement they might come to us with,” Spicer said. “We’ve had to threaten arbitration to get them to come to the table to discuss violations.”

According to Spicer, Lafarge has been guilty of excessive vibrations one in every 10 times they’ve blasted the last six months. She said they did not mine Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday due to violations. In addition, Lafarge has twice been cited by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources for excessive dust and nine times by the Missouri Mine Safety Health Administration in the last nine months.

“Some of those citations by MMSHA were very serious including gasoline spills and improper storage and handling of explosives,” Spicer said.

Whereas the county has jurisdiction over the WinsterStone blasting, Sugar Creek’s laws will govern any blasting in Cedar Crest. The city annexed the area in 2006.

“The Sugar Creek ordinance allows for a blasting vibration velocity of two inches per second, which is eight times higher than the county limit,” Spicer said.  “The ordinance makes no allowance for human tolerance or blast vibrations.”

Thompson, who was a part of the Concerned Citizens’ founding in 2000, said he will exchange as many as seven e-mails or phone calls with Lafarge officials before he can make progress – and that’s only if he uses the magic word: Arbitration.

“Lafarge’s holy grail is deny, delay and misinform,” Thompson said.

Spicer said the proposal to go in front of the planning and zoning commission will, according to a private meeting she held with Lafarge officials, include a 600-foot setback on the north and east of Cedar Crest and a 300-foot setback to the south. Lafarge also promised to purchase a wheel wash that will cut down on dust clinging to trucks leaving the loading zone and hire an outside engineer to create a predictor model that can accurately predict the amount of powder needed to minimize blasting vibrations. Lafarge has already established concrete barriers at the entrance to its Kentucky Road operation that will make it difficult for trucks to turn left upon leaving.

Lafarge officials were not available for comment on Friday.



Speak up

Lavonne Spicer and Jim Thompson of Cedar Crest, Swearingen, Fairview Concerned Citizens encourage homeowners living in the Cedar Crest area to participate in a picketing at Lafarge 4 to 5:30 p.m. Sept. 11. They also ask for homeowners to appear at the Sugar Creek Planning and Zoning Commission meeting at 7 p.m. Sept. 18 at Mike Onka Hall, 103 S. Sterling, where they will be allowed to give testimony.

“If there is no room inside the building, don’t go home,” Thompson said. “Your presence in the doorway or outside is as important as those who are inside giving testimony; we need to show Sugar Creek how much our homes mean to us.”