Lower Milford Wants Quarry Road Improvements

The widening and paving of public roads that would go through a proposed 90-acre quarry site in Lower Milford  Township would create negative and costly environmental impacts, the quarry developer said at the Lower Milford Planning Commission meeting Jan. 17.

Quarry developer Geryville Materials, Inc. prefers that West Mill Hill and Buhman roads remain as gravel roads instead of widening and paving them as the township prefers.

Improving the two roads would create “impacts to a watershed that could be detrimental,” John Ross, engineer for Geryville Materials, Inc., told the township planning commission Monday at its meeting in the municipal building. Widening and paving will require additional stormwater maintenance and wetland destruction that could produce “an increased cost factor that will come back on the township,” Ross said.

But township officials think keeping the gravel roads would require more township maintenance than if they were widened and paved, township manager Ellen Koplin and public works director Richard Kinsey said at the meeting. Kinsey added that paved roads would also benefit local farmers who move their farm equipment over the roads.

Terry Parish, attorney for Geryville Materials,  expressed frustration and asked the planners to “tell us what you want and we will build it.”

Commission solicitor David Backenstoe replied that it was up to the quarry developer to propose the “best design” that meets township road requirements within the existing, 33-foot-wide right-of-way, and then the planners would respond. Koplin said the quarry developer should provide “cost estimates of the maximum road improvements” that could be done within the right-of-way.

Geryville Materials has applied for township approval to open a 90-acre hard-rock quarry on 628 acres of land it owns in the township’s west end next to Montgomery County. The quarry operation would include asphalt and concrete plants, said company owner David Rittenhouse.

Rittenhouse agreed to come back to the commission with a road improvements plan for the proposed quarry.