A Water Pollution Abatement Plan was submitted for the quarry on March 7 and posted on the TCEQ’s website March 22. It was approved July 8 after review of comments from a 30-day public comment period that ended April 22, TCEQ Media Relations Specialist Victoria Cann said.
The backstory
The legal battle over whether a rock quarry can move forward excavating materials near the Meyer Ranch and Vintage Oaks subdivisions in New Braunfels has continued for several years leading up to this latest permit approval.
In October, the Texas Supreme Court denied a request by the Preserve Our Hill Country Environment Foundation and affiliated organizations of Comal County residents to rehear their case against the Vulcan Materials Company-Comal Quarry’s aggregate materials air permit, located in what was formerly known as the 1,500-acre White Ranch.
Those groups brought a legal case against the establishment of rock crushing at the site, located near the intersection of Hwy. 46 and FM 3009 just west of New Braunfels.
In November 2019 the TCEQ granted Vulcan Materials an air permit. State District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble vacated—or temporarily blocked—the permit in March 2021, as previously reported by Community Impact.
In September 2022, a retired judge sitting “by assignment” on behalf of the Texas 3rd Court of Appeals—Judge J. Woodfin Jones—reversed the March 2021 ruling, writing that “substantial evidence supports the commissioners’ determination that the proposed plant’s crystalline silica emissions will not negatively affect human health or welfare,” according to the legal opinion.
The specifics
Cann said the company proposes the construction of a quarry with associated plant areas, buildings, stockpiles, and access roads on approximately 1,515.16 acres.
That area would include:
- Quarry pit areas of approximately 956 acres
- 25-foot vegetative areas adjoining the 100-year floodplain
- Maintaining vegetative areas along the property line.
- A 100-foot buffer adjacent to all neighboring properties
- A minimum 25-foot vertical separation from the Edwards Aquifer
Next steps
Milann Guckian, president of the PHCE, said the organization will be meeting with attorneys to file a motion to overturn and to discuss the next steps in the process.
"That'll be the last thing we could do in the TCEQ process, which is what we did to the air quality permit. We went through everything that we could do through TCEQ," Guckian said. "And then when TCEQ went ahead and granted the permit anyway—without listening to our science and to the data and the things that we had presented—that's when we turned around and appealed to the district court."
Guckian said the PHCE estimates that when the group began challenging the location of the Vulcan Comal Quarry and voicing environmental concerns seven years ago, about 12,000 residents lived in a 5-mile radius of the quarry.
"It's upwards of 16,000 now and that's probably conservative, but the area is growing," Guckian said. "It is all residential. I mean, this is not an industrial area."
