It has been five years to the month since developers of the proposed Singleton Quarry first appeared before the Lake County Plan Commission and opponents of the project first dug in against it.
Singleton Stone LLC is planning a limestone quarry on a 1-mile-by-1.5-mile parcel of farmland south of Indiana 2, west of Rangeline Road and east of Interstate 65 in Eagle Creek Township in south Lake County.
The quarry is expected to be about 450 deep and will pump between 30 million and 72 million gallons of water a day into the Singleton Ditch. It will be about the size and depth of the Thornton Quarry in Thornton, Ill., that runs through the village on either side of Interstate 80/294.
Developers argue they have mineral rights to the valuable limestone below the ground and intend to use the land mine for limestone instead of continuing to have the acreage farmed.
Opponents decry the danger to the area's fresh well water supply, charging the quarry will dry wells and potentially pollute those left pumping water to homes and farms. They also fear the loss of some of Indiana's best farmland to a non-farming venture and the impact on residents' quality of life and property values.
"I oppose what they are doing with that quarry, to go that deep is definitely going to impact the surrounding water tables," Lake County Councilman Eldon Strong said. "The Singleton Ditch is not going to handle the kind of pumping they are anticipating. This fight will continue to go on."
Strong, a Crown Point Republican, and a cadre of other officials representing residents in the area including State Sen. Rick Niemeyer, R-6th, and Lake Commissioner Gerry Scheub, D-Crown Point, have taken a stand against the quarry. Scheub was removed from the drainage board, which had to issue a permit to allow the quarry to discharge into the Singleton Ditch, by a federal court after developers successfully sued challenging his impartiality. He was replaced with a court-appointed proxy to a special drainage board convened only to discuss the Singleton project.
"We have beautiful producing farmland down there. Producing for our needs, our citizens, our country," Strong said. "To put something like that down there causes me to lose sleep at night. That would be devastating for south Lake County."
Strong also said he has his eye on the status of the proposed Illiana toll road. He said if the Illiana goes away, it may be possible that the quarry will follow.
Attorney Jim Wieser, who represents Singleton Stone LLC on local matters, said developers are moving forward with the permitting process and intend to go forward with the project.
"When we started the whole thing, the Illiana was not even discussed," Wieser said. Developers began the permitting process a year before public information session on the Illiana began in 2011. The quarry was never predicated on the construction of the Illiana."
Wieser said he expects developers to continue to make their way through the permitting process.
While developers of the quarry have tackled the needed approval on the county level, a series of permits from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, Indiana Department of Environmental Management and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have yet to be approved.
IDEM air quality and National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits will be required for this project along with a general permit for storm water run-off associated with construction activities) a general permit for industrial storm water run-off, and a general permit for sand, gravel, and dimension stone/crushed stone mining.
The first water quality permit application to the DNR remains under review within the department, according to a department spokesman.
Linda Cosgrove, who has been leading the opposition to the quarry along with John Bryant, whose family farms land adjacent to the site, said they will be continuing the pressure.
"We are still hopeful we can stop it. The landfill took us seven years in a fight like this. We have to keep it going," Cosgrove said.
The battle against the quarry stings of déjà vu for residents who 20 years ago were engaged in a similar fight against a landfill proposed for the same general area. They were successful in defeating the landfill during the permitting process.
Cosgrove said they have called into question the environmental study completed by the developer in March 2014 as incomplete. She said due to the heavy snow cover and frozen ground at the time it was impossible to determine the wildlife living in wetland ditches.
She is hopeful as environmental experts shine a brighter light on the details of the proposal the problems opponents have been trying to point out throughout the process beginning with the plan commission five years ago will finally be understood.
"It's frustrating. It's very frustrating," Cosgrove said.