Former state Senator Milton “Toby” Fitch and Weldon attorney Ronnie Reaves talked outside American Legion Post 38, where Halifax Aggregates held a community information meeting Thursday on its proposed rock-mining operation in Halifax County.

Fitch supports the proposal, while Reaves said he wanted more information.

“I see a need in this county,” Fitch said. “I think that this is a very good company. It offers employment at a higher rate than what’s been here. There will be steady jobs and life will be better.”

Fitch said he wants to see the community give the company an opportunity. He said his support stems from the more than 20 high-paying jobs the company says it will bring to the county and its projected $300,000 a year in taxes.

“I see quarries across the state and in some high-priced neighborhoods. Some of the things that I’ve heard people say don’t match with what I know to be the case,” Fitch said. 

He spoke about the jobs the project aims to create, the importance of being good corporate citizens, and being part of the community. “The types of things that you’d want to have. Obviously, a business is a marriage to the community, and the community does not make it without a good marriage with the people.”

The former senator, who lives in Wilson County, said he has studied the company. “I find the ownership exemplary, and you just can’t make it off timber alone. Timber is great, but you need something else to go along with it. God puts rock where he wants rock. From all I know, it’s a good opportunity based on good science.”

Reaves said he was concerned about the environmental impact. “I wanted to know if they were going to do blasting within the area and what effects it’s going to have on property values and houses and structures in the area.”

Reaves said he likes the salaries that are being discussed—anywhere between $25 to $40 an hour—“which is pretty (good) for here.” 

He said he felt the company answered his questions, but he’s not rushing into a pro- or anti-mining mindset. “I came here and I’ve got to wait it out. I think it is probably something that we need, and we can use the economic impact.”

On the heels of the planning board meeting

Thursday’s informational meeting came the day after the Halifax County Planning Board failed to reach a quorum to discuss a proposed mining ordinance, Deputy County Manager Christina Wells confirmed.

She said the board of commissioners will hold a legislative hearing at its March 2 meeting. The county postponed a similar hearing on proposed mining regulations at its September 29 meeting last year. The planning board will discuss the mining ordinance at its next meeting on March 18.

The information session

Inside the legion hall, Halifax Aggregates, a subsidiary of Synergy Materials, assembled its team of engineers and scientists with numerous displays of the project, which is proposed to be located near the Halifax-Northampton Regional Airport.

John Cross, the owner of the Franklin, Tennessee-based company, said even in the early stages of the session, the event had seen traffic. “I’ve been pretty busy, actually, and I’ve walked several people through the entire presentation and answered all their questions.”

One of the early concerns that has been registered is the proximity of the proposed project to the airport. “It’s very common that there are quarries close to airports,” Cross said. “We’re not any closer than several other airports.”

The proposed site fits the company’s needs; of the 700 acres that the company controls, it found there were approximately 68 acres that had rock close enough to the surface, Cross said. “All of these things are regulated… and we abide by whatever rules, regulations, and setback distances they require.”

Site selection

Mining starts with trying to find a suitable location, Cross said. “The quality of the material is important and the proximity of the material to the surface is important.”

Then there is the question of a market for the material. Currently, all the rock needed for jobs must be imported from either out of state or from another county, which he said dramatically increases the cost of transportation. “We identify a need first. If there’s no need, or they’re already overserved with plenty of quarries, then there’s really no need.”

In its quest to find new locations, the company looked for areas that were underserved. “We were looking for areas that were overpaying for material. That got the search started,” Cross said. “We started looking for viable-sized properties that could potentially work. We narrowed that down and finally found a property that had suitable material on it. We bought that farm a couple of years ago and then we took an option to expand it.”

The operation does bring noise, he admitted. “Inside the operation, we run equipment that does create noise, and so our commitment is that we’ll maintain 70 decibels or less at our property line.”

There are no homeowners immediately adjacent to the company’s property line, Cross said. “There are setbacks, so the closest neighbor to our eventual quarry is approximately 1,700 feet away.”

Halifax Aggregates hired a company to conduct a noise study. “They take our loudest pieces of equipment and then they do a study based on distance.”

The results of that study show that the company will be operating at an estimated 55 decibels at the nearest neighbor's location. “Anybody who’s farther than that, it would be even less.”

The process

The rock at the proposed site lies under approximately 30 feet of dirt. “The first thing we do is go in there with equipment and we start to remove that dirt and build berms between us and the neighbors. That does a few things: it gives us a place to put the dirt, and it also gives us a way to reduce the noise and the visual aspect of the operations. They can’t see everything that we’re doing."

“When you’ve got a nice berm, you get bushes and trees and then you’ve got grass. You can make it look real nice. That’s the first thing we do, and then what we’re trying to do is create a buffer between us and them.”

From the property line, the company has a minimum 100-foot buffer to start with. There are wetlands along the edge of the property, Cross said, and one that splits the property. “We have to have a setback from those. We hire these experts to determine where we can and where we can’t operate. Then we avoid all those areas that are sensitive so that we don’t bother them.”

Once the berms are built, the drilling and blasting commences. “We’ll blast two to three times a month. A blast takes about a second to complete.” The vibration level from the blasting is estimated to be about 5 percent of the regulated limit, he said. “We won’t be causing any damage to anyone’s structures.”

Cross said there will be no negative impact on the airport. “The FAA has regulations, and I’ve done projects before where we went and talked to the airport folks and they didn’t have any problem with it. There are quarries all over the United States that are actually closer than this, and many of those are right here in North Carolina.”

The rock

There is about 400 feet of rock at the site, Cross said. “That’s a lot of rock. This quarry could last a hundred years.”

The company’s customers will be anyone involved in construction. “This is the single largest ingredient that goes into asphalt. It’s the single largest ingredient that goes into concrete. They use it for road base, pipe bedding — all construction projects require some amount of aggregate.”

Currently, Cross said aggregate customers “are paying way more than they have to because they have to import it.” With this quarry, he said, there is the potential to cut costs in half.

Hiring

The company plans on hiring local people to operate the facility. “We’ll hire them, we’ll train them, we pay them. Our lowest-paid guys are $25 an hour. Our highest-paid guys are bumping $40 an hour—those are like electricians and mechanics.”

There will be jobs for truck drivers as well. “If you can drive a car, you can drive a truck in a quarry.”

The company will produce the products and load the materials into customers' trucks. The truck then goes over a scale for weighing, the customer gets a ticket, and then takes the material to the job site.

Halifax Aggregates is anticipating 20 employees directly associated with the property. “In addition to that, we usually end up creating about three times as many jobs.”

Taxes

The company spends several million dollars a year in operating costs, and a lot of those dollars are spent locally, Cross said. “We hired an expert to help us calculate what our tax impact would be, and we’re not asking for any tax breaks or incentives. Our estimate is that we’ll be increasing the tax revenue in the county by $300,000 a year.”

That figure does not include employee benefits and the capital investment going into the operation, he said. “Based on our estimates of how much there is and how much we think we would sell, if we did really well, we might be able to grow this to 750,000 tons a year.”

Over 40 years in the business

Cross has been in the aggregate business for over 40 years. He worked 20 years for Vulcan and, 21 years ago, started Turn-Key Processing Solutions. “We’ve done all types of greenfield developments, helped get new operations going, and fixed up old ones. All these aggregate producers around the country have been my customers for over the last two decades.”

One of those customers was the Wisconsin-based Lannon Stone. “We had a good relationship with them. We were aligned. We like to do things right; we like to do things safely,” Cross said. “We care about the community and because of that alignment, I felt comfortable partnering with them to try to develop this.”

The reason behind the information session

Cross said the information session is part of the due diligence process. “To get to this point, we had to do a lot of work to make sure the project was feasible in the first place. We had to believe that it could be done well and that it would work.”

Experts were hired to conduct studies. “A lot of times when we go and do this work, we will find an issue like the rock’s not good enough, or it’s too deep, or there’s an endangered species on the property, or there’s some issue keeping us from wanting to move forward.”

Through all this scouting work, he said, “It became clear that this was a really good site and a really good opportunity.”

The company has voluntarily offered the county several conditions, which Cross said makes it easy for them to hold the company accountable and stick to those best practices. “We’re not even touching anything that’s considered sensitive. We didn’t run into any flaws or anything that would stop us from moving forward.”

Cross said the company will be looking for ways to get involved in the community. “We recognize that we need to be a part of the community and not just operate inside it. We look for opportunities that have value. We look for opportunities to make things better for the people around us.”

For instance, he said that when it finally gets to a point where the company can’t mine anymore, it will seek feedback from the community on land use. “In this case, it could be a lake, it could be a wildlife refuge area, or it could be a park. It could be all kinds of things. We’ll really let the county tell us what’s important to them.”

What happens next

The company has not yet filed a request to get a zoning modification, Cross said. “If we get through this step, then we’ll put in applications to move forward on state permitting.”

If successful through the permitting, Cross said it would take approximately two years before the company could have finished products for its customers. “It’s a great opportunity for us. It’s a great opportunity to become Halifax County’s aggregate producer and serve all the people with as much value as possible.”

Said Cross: “We would obviously benefit from that financially and benefit from being a good steward for God’s people and God’s resources.”