Vulcan Exec Says No Truth to Concerns Raised by Citizens

Executives with Vulcan Materials, the company planning to put in a rock quarry on Highway 59 in Lavonia, are responding to a story we did this week about the Stop the Rock Quarry signs and the effort by people living near the proposed site to stop it.

Jimmy Flemming, VP of Permitting and External Affairs for Vulcan Materials, said Thursday, the comment in our story that companies will wear you down until they get what they want is not true of Vulcan Materials.

“I know it was a quote from someone else, but this is a process. We’ve actually gone out and sought input before we even file. We’ve promised that that process would not end. We will continue that process. if that were our tactic it wouldn’t involve meeting with the community, finding out what their concerns are, and trying to address them,” he said.

Flemming said another quote in the story that had to do with blasting at their quarry in Gwinnett County was also not true.

That came from Lavonia businessman and former Franklin County Commissioner David Strickland who said he had a cousin who worked for Vulcan Materials years ago at the Gwinnett quarry.

Strickland said his cousin told him they would have to let the Atlanta airport know when they were blasting because the rock and debris that would spew so high into the air it was a flight path hazard.  Flemming said that is not true.

“That has never happened,” he stated.

When asked if, after a number of meetings with citizens, there would ever come a time that Vulcan Materials would stop efforts to put in a quarry on Highway 59 if citizens continued to be against it, Flemming said it would be difficult to do that.

“Our process is different from a lot of industrial processes. We have to locate where the rock is and where the rock is readily accessible,” he said. “That is the case here. You have a very limiting factor of where we can operate. You can’t move the rock.  It has to be accessible, close enough to the surface to make it feasible to mine. It has to have the right chemical properties that we look for to meet specifications for concrete and asphalt mixes. So, it’s not as easy to just going to find another piece of property and opening the site.”

Flemming again said he still did not know when Vulcan would apply for a conditional use permit or file a rezoning application but said the Company would continue to meet with citizens to hear and address their concerns.