Fight goes on over Plainfield-area quarry

The battle over the AZ Rock quarry rages on.

Opponents of plans to expand the Wheatland Township quarry overfilled the Will County Board chambers for a public hearing this week, urging a vote to stop the proposal.

Instead, the board voted to table a vote until March, a decision that was met with groans of opposition from a crowd that vowed to return.

“What they want is time for us to go away, stop the fight, and, ‘We’ll vote on it later when we have time to get it together,‘” Greg Heist, a resident of the nearby Lakeland Clubs subdivision in Plainfield, told the board at the hearing on Thursday.

The quarry has been operating since the 1950s, a time when more quarries than subdivisions could be found in the immediate area.

In recent decades, Lakeland Clubs, other subdivisions and about four schools have been built around the quarries and road material plants that operate in the area. More homes are being built today.

A Welsch Redi-Mix plant operates across 135th Street from AZ Rock, although opponents said the quarry’s plan to add concrete and asphalt production pose a threat to the health of residents and schoolchildren.

“This area has been historically mined,” attorney Gary Davidson, representing AZ Rock, told the board.

Davidson argued that the agricultural zoning on the 90 acres planned for quarry expansion already allow for mining, although not all the operations AZ Rock wants to add.

Plainfield Mayor John Argoudelis, argued that the AZ Rock expansion amounts to “a brand new quarry” since the land had not previously been slated for quarry operations.

“The homeowners were here before this concept of an expanded quarry was proposed,” Argoudelis said.

The village boards of Plainfield and Bolingbrook along with Plainfield School District 202 oppose the expansion.

The quarry has a Bolingbrook address but is on unincorporated land lying between Bolingbrook and Plainfield and within the Plainfield school district.

AZ Rock wants to add 90 acres, using land it already owns, which would bring quarry operations closer to Essington Road.

The public hearing had its emotional moments, including when Alex Deo brought his daughter, Alaria, a second-grader at Liberty Elementary School.

Alaria, reading from a written statement, said she wanted to grow up to be a pediatrician and worried about what the quarry could do to her health.

“We need you to protect us,” Alaria told the County Board.

The expansion would bring quarry operations closer to Liberty Elementary School at 1401 Essington Road.

The school was built in 2005.

Plainfield School Superintendent Glenn Wood said the foundation of Liberty Elementary School has had to be repaired and argued that expansion of the quarry would pose a threat to safety and structures at Liberty and three other schools built within a half-mile of the quarry.

The number of local governments and local residents united in opposition was “very uncommon,” said Will County Board Member Frankie Pretzel, R-New Lenox, who chairs the Land Use and Development Committee.

Pretzel nevertheless joined the majority of the board voting 14-6 to table a vote on the project until March.

He and others urged AZ Rock and opponents to get together to work out some sort of compromise.

AZ Rock is seeking industrial zoning and special use permits that would allow for blasting, concrete and asphalt mixing, and opening of the site for disposal of clean construction materials.

Davidson said AZ Rock could use the land for some type of mining operations even without county approvals.

County Board Member Mark Revis, R-Plainfield, said the land was not likely to remain undeveloped.

“We have to accept the fact that there is something coming to this parcel of land whether we like it or not,” Revis said.