Last year Southeast Road Builders started work on a gravel pit on Lutak road. The company didn’t have the proper permit. The borough briefly issued a cease and desist order, before granting a conditional use permit for two sites along that road. In December, residents filed a successful appeal to the assembly. This sent the matter back to the Planning commission, which revoked the permit. Southeast Road Builders is taking the borough to court over this.
The company recently offered to drop its lawsuit. It noted that many of the objections to its work focused on one of the sites located near the ferry terminal. If the borough issues a permit for the other site only, the company said it would drop the case.
The assembly considered the offer at its last meeting.
TJ Mason came to speak on behalf of Southeast Road Builders.
Mason: “We feel like we haven’t exactly received fair treatment on this permit.”
Mason noted many of the activities proposed are a use by right in an industrial zone.
Mason: “The only thing that we are asking to do under the conditional permit is to remove resources from that site. Any material processing the traffic, is all use by right in an industrial zone. We are already permitted by DOT, we’ve met all their conditions for the driveway permits and access.”
Questions remain about how the project would affect the stability of the surrounding slope. Assembly member Ben Aultman Moore said that is his primary concern.
Aultman-Moore: “Without a commitment to interpreting existing LIDAR data and having a greater understanding of what the chances of resource extraction are in destabilizing that slope that is high traffic and high consequence, a bunch of essential infrastructure, I’m not going to vote to overturn this.”
To overturn the Planning Commission’s decision to revoke the permit, the assembly needed a supermajority. The 3 to 2 vote fell short of that, and Southeast Road Builders remains without a permit to operate the gravel pit. Mayor Tom Morphet expressed hope the matter could still be resolved out of court.
Our call to Southeast Road Builders requesting comments went unanswered.
