Despite concerns from Henrico officials and residents, Goochland Planning Commission advances Luck Stone proposal

Despite requests to the contrary from Henrico officials and residents, the Goochland County Planning Commission Thursday night considered – and then unanimously recommended for approval – plans from Luck Stone Corporation to expand operations at its Rockville quarry on the Henrico-Goochland line. The case next will be heard Sept. 3 by the Goochland Board of Supervisors, which holds final decision-making authority on it.

Henrico Planning Director Joe Emerson had sent a letter to the commission and Goochland Community Development Director Jamie Sherry July 17 urging that the case be deferred by at least 30 days to allow for Henrico officials and residents to review details about the proposal and a 48-page Goochland planning staff report about it that was published July 16.

But during a 50-minute hearing Thursday night, members of the Goochland commission did not publicly acknowledge that request and instead held a 50-minute public hearing about the case before voting to endorse it.

The 70-acre Luck property sits along the Henrico County line, adjacent to about 90 homes in the Westin Estates and West Ridge subdivisions in Short Pump. Luck is seeking a conditional use permit that would allow it to expand eastward on the site (closer to the Henrico border) in order to conduct secondary and tertiary-level stone processing activities and to store top soil and rock that must be removed from other areas of the site in order to conduct mining operations. It also wants to build a berm using that soil that could reach 150 feet in height along the property’s southern edge near the Henrico border.

At Thursday’s hearing, Three Chopt District Supervisor Misty Whitehead and three Henrico residents who live in the Westin Estates neighborhood reiterated their hopes that the commission would defer the case to allow them more time to understand the proposal. Whitehead told the commission that although she appreciated Luck’s longstanding role in the community (it’s had operations in Goochland for 96 years), this project wasn’t ready for consideration by the body.

“I know that they want to get this right, and I’m standing before you guys because I think that we are not there yet,” she said. “The process in this case is not quite where it needs to be for folks to believe that this is representing good public policy.”

Westin Estates resident Amy Mogetz echoed Whitehead’s sentiments.

“We would really appreciate more time to just understand what this is,” Mogetz told the commission. “This has a significant impact. Our property lines abut the county line. These buffers are in our back yards. I feel the blasts daily. I work from home, and the house shakes. The noise, it’s significant. And we would just like the opportunity to review. . . this next phase, how this will impact us.”

A key concern of Henrico residents and officials is the proposed berm that Luck wants to build along the southern border of its site and the Henrico line. An earlier rezoning case involving the property requires a 350-foot buffer between that line and Luck’s operations, but its new proposal would reduce to 50-feet that “undisturbed” buffer at the county line and allow the company to build a tiered-style berm spanning the other 300 feet toward its operations.

That berm would be constructed in part using the overburden materials (likely to be mostly soil, according to Luck’s Director of Mid-Atlantic Greenfield Development E. Linwood Thomas, IV) that the company relocates from mining operations on the site and would be build up over a period of years or decades, he said. It also would include plantings and vegetation.

The company will not conduct any blasting, mining or extraction activities on the portion of the site to which it is proposing an expansion of operations, Thomas said, nor would its proposed hours of operations there (7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday) reflect any change from its current hours of operation on the overall site. Luck will need to clear trees from the area on which it intends to locate overburden materials, but it believes that by storing those materials on its own site (as opposed to trucking them off-site), it could save between 20 to 40 dump truck trips per day from local roads.

“For Luck Stone to be able to continue to operate here for the next 70, 80, 90, 100 years, we need to secure this permit,” Thomas said. “We’ve spent considerable time trying to make sure we get this right. Nobody wants anything in their backyards, we recognize that, but we want to make sure it’s the best project for the community and that we can still operate.”

Homes in the Westin Estates neighborhood, he said, were build between 2012-2015 – after Luck earned rezoning approval for certain operations on its site. He told the commission that construction of the berm would be designed to help mitigate the impact of the company’s activities so that they would be less disruptive to neighbors.

“We want to insulate ourselves from other members of the community,” he said. “We want to be good stewards and partners. We believe that as we build these berm buffers we will be able to do that to mitigate noise and sound and any potential dust that may arise, and so as part of the reasons we want to do this is to make sure we’re insulating those citizens, mainly in Henrico.”

Westin Estates resident Juri Miller told the commission she had doubts about the company’s sincerity, claiming that it had made several “last-minute changes” to its plan and had not shared with neighbors specific air-quality studies they had requested that would show if and how the facility was impacting the air they breathe.

“I think it’s funny that Luck Stone says there’s no disruption to our day-to-day quality of life from their quarry operations because that could not be farther from the truth,” Miller said. “We hear the blasting all the time. We hear it night and day. Last night, I felt the house shake. This is not something that happens once in awhile. This happens all of the time.

“They have never once reached out to us to find out how much it’s disrupting our lives. They’ve never asked any questions of how bad it is. They just said that there’s no disruption to our quality of life, and that is flat-out false, and I don’t see how they get away with saying that.”

Thomas told the commission that Luck Stone has not had an air or water violation in 60 years at the site and said that the company does conduct its own air quality monitoring regularly but that residents also can contact the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality to request air quality results.

“At any point in time, we’d hope, if there was ever any issue with dust or air, the first thing that citizens would do as we begin – if this is approved – this process, is they would reach out to us,” Thomas said. “Because we would immediately, in the Luck way. . . try to figure out a solution to make it right.”