ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — The proposal of a controversial new concrete plant in one North Buncombe neighborhood has led to community backlash.
On Thursday night, Jan. 2, North Buncombe Quarry and Southern Concrete Materials, the organizations behind the proposed concrete site, hosted a community meeting to address the neighborhood’s concerns.
Residents showed up prepared. The meeting began at 5:30 p.m. in a meeting room across the road from the quarry at Linder Industrial Machinery. More than 30 community members showed up to hear what the developers had to say.
Read more about the project proposal and the community’s initial backlash in our story here.
SCM is prospecting a property off Goldview Road, which runs from the French Broad River to Aiken Road, heading toward Interstate 26 Exit 21 and Weaverville. The concrete plant would be installed right next to the quarry at 100 Goldview Road, adding an additional flow of heavy truck traffic to an already busy road.
According to Christina Sobin, a retired environmental researcher and community leader, and her neighbors, truck traffic is a major problem in the community as it is.
Sobin has led an effort to educate the Goldview community about the potential problems with a new concrete plant and inform them of the meetings that the developers have held.
One outspoken neighbor on Sobin’s team had a list of dangers the existing industry has posed to the neighborhood.
“Just to get in and out of our neighborhood, we have to wait for lines and lines of dump trucks to fly past us. They throw rocks off the side of the road, they run off the road, the trucks are in the middle of the road,” said Dawn McKinney, an international recruiter for Yummy Jobs. “We’ve had neighbors that’ve had their animals hit by speeding vehicles.”
McKinney has lived in Spanish Oaks, a housing collective off of Goldview Road, since 2008. She and her wife, Barbara Breedlove, keep their three dogs fenced in at home for fear they’ll be hit, too.
Outside of the danger the trucks create, residents said the road has experienced significant wear and tear from the weight of the vehicles.
Bing Owens, a forecast manager for Ahold Delhaize, lives with his wife, Valerie, on the corner of Spanish Oaks and Goldview Road. Owens said he sees anywhere from 30 to 50 trucks go past in an hour when sitting on his front porch overlooking Goldview.
“Down the road to where the Baptist church and cemetery are is getting pretty torn up,” Owens said. “There’s some pretty big holes and ruts and stuff as people turn between Aiken and Goldview, and that’s just at 30 trucks an hour. So, I’m worried that this little county road can’t handle that many large heavy trucks.”
Owens, Sobin and McKinney all work from home, where the loud noise of “Jake brakes” and the smell the trucks produce interrupt their work. Zoom meetings, phone calls and concentration are all peppered with hissing noises and unpleasant odors. This came as a surprise to Sobin and Owens, both of whom moved to the neighborhood within the last three years, and was verified by McKinney to have increased over the 16 years she’s lived in her home.
Sobin did extensive research on the area before moving to Spanish Oaks, driving in the area during all hours of the day, scoping out the quarry and adjacent asphalt plant and inquiring about the area with several neighbors. Everything seemed great, she said.
That feeling changed after she moved in. Sobin began to detect noxious odors from the asphalt plant, a heavy increase in traffic and hear tremendous amounts of noise from behind her house when the quarry considered an expansion there.
She brought her concerns to Hedrick Industries, the company in charge of North Buncombe Quarry.
“I’ve talked to Jason and Ralph a lot, plant managers at Hedrick, they’re always respectful, they always listen to us. But we still have the same problems,” Sobin said.
For instance, there was a sound study that the quarry conducted on the area that Sobin said residents were promised the results of but was never delivered.
Despite monthly meetings the quarry hosted with the community, spurred by Sobin and organized by Hedrick, the issues with truck traffic persisted.
“When we ask about that to the owners of the property at the rock quarry, they tell us that we should be the one calling the Department of Transportation and that they have no say-so over the trucks because they’re all contracted,” said McKinney.
This all led to the meeting Thursday night, led by the heads of SCM, Hedrick and Civil Design Concepts, the civil engineering firm spearheading the project’s construction.
Over the course of the meeting, which ran for well more than an hour and a half, the developers walked through their plans for the concrete plant before taking questions from residents.
It was an anxious room, filled with concerns for the environment, the neighborhood and the future, as well as frustrations over the current state of industrialization in what is considered a residential community.
Warren Sugg, the figurehead of Civil Design Concepts, took on much of the scrutiny around the project. Sugg emphasized that the meeting was hosted voluntarily by SCM, iterating that the group was there because it values and cares about the neighborhood’s concerns.
Sugg also explained that the project wasn’t a done deal, a fact championed by Sobin: the prospective concrete plant requires approval from a quasi-judicial hearing next week, on Wednesday, Jan. 8, as well as permit confirmation for its grading, well and septic systems.
“We all have all kinds of things that require concrete,” Sugg said, explaining the need for the plant after another local concrete station was recently shuttered in Weaverville.
As far as the community’s biggest concern went, the regulation of traffic, SCM said it would only be adding five trucks to the daily traffic, carting two to three loads a day. Furthermore, all of its trucks are installed with a Lytx drive-cam system, which ensures truck drivers are abiding by traffic laws and operating their vehicles as safely as possible.
The Hedrick trucks, meanwhile, are the independent contractors McKinney mentioned. There is no controlling the behavior of those drivers beyond what Hedrick urges them not to do – signage leaving the quarry reminds truckers to respect the neighborhood. Another sign asks them to lay off the Jake brakes.
“Maybe we need to make it bigger,” joked Hedrick president Joe Lordi.
Lordi made it clear that most of the problems with the trucks, speeding and road maintenance were issues that needed to be addressed with the North Carolina Department of Transportation.
However, over the meeting’s discourse, it became apparent that what the community was asking for was immediate advocacy from the quarry and SCM with the DOT.
“We could be advocates for you,” said Jeff Lamm, the environmental compliance officer at SCM.
Sara Burkes, a fourth grade teacher at Immaculata Catholic School, wanted more than a maybe.
“Could or will?” Burkes asked.
“No, we will,” replied Lamm.
While the future of the concrete plant is far from concrete, remaining a split opinion between the Goldview community and companies, yesterday’s meeting was a step forward to uniting the neighborhood and its industry toward a safer road for all.
“You have our pledge,” Lordi said. “We can at least get DOT as an audience.”
The company president promised that the conversation about making Goldview Road safer is not over.
“We’ll keep pushing that issue,” he said.
Lordi invited residents who spotted errant trucks to call Hedrick at (828) 645-5560 with the name of truck and its number.
For now, the issue of the concrete plant will persist to next week: the semi-judicial hearing will be held by the Buncombe County Board of Adjustment at noon on Wednesday, Jan. 8., 30 Valley St.
More information about the hearing can be found at www.buncombecounty.org.
CORRECTION: 2:48 p.m., Jan. 6, 2025 — A previous version of this article spelled Christina Sobin’s last name as “Sorbin.” That’s inaccurate — it’s Sobin.
