Panel To Address Rock Crushing Permit Process

Attorneys for the Big Bend Air Quality Group plan to present a statement to the Legislative Advisory Committee on Rock Crushers and Quarries in Austin, Tex.

The committee will look at the process by which the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality permits rock quarries, said Jason Anderson, legislative director for state Sen. Frank Madla.

Anderson said Madla has asked TCEQ Chairman Kathleen White to address the committee on permits by rule at the hearing this week.

U.S. Clay LP of Birmingham, Ala., wants to build a bentonite rock crushing plant about eight miles east of Alpine near U.S. Highway 67.

Permits by rule are another form of authorization from the TCEQ where a company has to follow certain rules or face enforcement action by the agency, according to the TCEQ Web site.

Staff attorney Dan Long said there is no comment period or public notice required for a permit by rule. Once a review is complete, the agency sends a letter to the company saying everything’s OK, he said.

The Big Bend Air Quality Group’s statement will urge the committee to advise the TCEQ to include consideration of air, light and noise pollution, traffic and health issues, as well as the affected community’s economic resources in its permitting process, a press release said.

The Big Bend Air Quality Group was formed last spring after U.S. Clay received a draft permit from the TCEQ to build a facility near Alpine.

Butch Burkett, president of U.S. Clay, said the company has doubled its environmental controls on its proposed plant.

Burkett said construction could start soon after a permit by rule is issued, and it would take three to eight months to complete. Burkett said plans are to hire about 25 employees.

Pleas from Big Bend residents to TCEQ at a public meeting in August 2003 to reject U.S. Clay’s plans to build the bentonite facility have been “uniformly dismissed, since the current permitting process considers only those persons within a 1-mile range of the rock crusher as being affected by the facility. Odessa (Texas) American