ROCK QUAREY

I was just told the neighbor is going o try to have some real rough farm land in Madison County Iowa rezoned so he can start a rock quarry. I'm Wondering if anyone else has experienced this. The meeting at the zoning board is tomorrow night

(quoted from post at 11:23:54 02/19/14) I was just told the neighbor is going o try to have some real rough farm land in Madison County Iowa rezoned so he can start a rock quarry. I'm Wondering if anyone else has experienced this. The meeting at the zoning board is tomorrow night

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We have a lot of small ones around. I'm pretty sure they are watching them closely and making them reclaim the land when done.

Rick

There is a large Quarry on the edge of Cedar Rapids . Lot of folks I know are having issues with Blasting . Cracks in walls ,noise etc .

Have a rock quarry by our place in Wisconsin, down sides are:
1) Fencing at the edge really does stop anything and not standing up for entire distance - result is concern if I am running the dogs and if they happen to chase a rabbit or other animal off the side - neighbor lost his coon hound that way.
2) Blasting has affected foundations and water lines
3) When operating noise and dust from the crusher and the increase in fast moving truck traffic
While it is not in use the entire time, a neighbor who does not really complain about anything. Neat place to looking for fossils.

get your house and foundation and any other buildings checked for cracks etc. BEFORE any quarry starts blasting, so that if damage results from blasting, you will be able to have good grounds for damages. Hire a neutral engineer to do the work and document everything. Good luck.
Ditto on the noise and dust.

"Get your house and foundation and any other buildings checked for cracks etc BEFORE any quarry starts blasting".

Good advice. I used to live in Romeoville, IL about a decade and a half ago where one might've been able to dig an inch or two before hit shale. Basically only a house or three in town had an actual basement, because its nearly impossible to dig that deep. At best, everyone has a crawl space for ranch houses, or there are raised ranches, because you just can't dig deep enough to put in basements. They put in a couple of near bye quarries when I still lived there, and the damage to people's foundations from the blasting was incredible. First the cracks, and then the frozen water during winter months below surface that pushed the foundations apart. When I sold my home, I had huge gaps to close with hydraulic cement, and it was extremely hard to do because of the shale around the outside of the foundation that couldn't dig down to patch. Ended up doing what could do best from the outside, and trying to back fill from inside the crawl space.

Good luck. Get pictures and videos ahead of time, or you will get the shaft down the road. Most of us did.

Mark

You may have problems with your well also. Jim

Thanks for your replies guys. One of my neighboring landowners is a lawyer, he is going to try to stop this. I wonder if a home inspector would be ok to look at my basement walls, or should I try to get an engineer look at them. We have a group of them right down the street. I am going to consult a new friend of mine who used to own quarries in southern Iowa, hope he can provide me with information. This will be on one of the larger sites where arrow heads and such are found, just above middle river. I hope this has some bearing on the zoning board.

another way that might stop things being as i happen to know, i spent years working in a gravel quarry, is make the landowner state how big the quarry is going to be, and how many employees he will have if he even has 1,or he plans to sell so much as 1 rock to the public, he falls under the federal mine acts of 1977, unless he has the appropriate permits, insurance, epa clearances, and site rehabiltiation plans all done with the proper licences and all the other stuff, [ were talking several million dollars worth of stuff here] he's done, right there , while out here some ranchers still use a pit site to maintaine pit run gravel for their private roads, these guys are on pvt land and many miles from any public viewing and they dont sell their stuff to other people, the days of a guy with a old loader and a screening plant going into the gravel business are long past

Tom take a little ride over to peru then go west about two miles and look at that 80 acres on the north side of the road they went in ruined it and went broke.let us know what you think of that. Thanks Jim p.s. Im guessing this is tire shop Tom?

I lived in a rental house wherea rock crusher from a stone quarry was 250 yards from the house. It ran 12 hours a day, 6 day a week. Noise and dust, back up beepers on the equipment, etc. I am not complaining, just stating what to expect. The township tried to shut the place down for years with no success.
DEP did make the company place seismagraphs around at different locations because of damage to houses from blasting.

Do I understand you correctly if I sell one rock off my property I have to have permits????

Yes Herb that's me.