Dear County Commissioners,
Yours is a tough job, probably with many more headaches than rewards. The upcoming consideration of approving the plan to develop the quarry on Dennis Station Road in District 4 will be of major importance.
At the open house at The Plaza Arts Center last Friday, representativesof the quarry operations answered questions from a small but steady stream of your constituents. One question we raised was: what would the drilling, blasting, and crushing operations do to the toxic coal ash pits Georgia Power has placed in areas contiguous to the intended quarry? Their reply was, “What coal ash pits?” and later, “Oh, (the pits) would be located near the power plant facility.”
The ash pits are located along Dennis Station Road, in an areaguarded with cameras and personnel behind the fencing built to keep the public safely away from the area.The only literature provided at the open house was a rack card stating that the quarry would bring $336,000 in taxes to Putnam County.
Gentlemen, this meager amount of money will not even begin to pay for road repairs to an area already congested with log truck traffic. Indeed, traffic in all parts of the county will be affected. The quarry employees also told me that the operation would continue for generations, 50 to 75 years. The resulting pit will be 400-feet deep, donated as a reservoirto Putnam County. What the quarry employee did not know or say was that the surrounding wetlands to the now forestedproperty will be drained and greatly damaged by the quarry operations. These wetlands feed into Rooty Creek and other areas of Lake Sinclair, which is a pump-back lake, so any sediment staysinthe lake.
With any quarry operation, there will be large amounts of sediment.
A simple Google search revealed that “granite dust generated from quarry operations is considered acarcinogenic material when it contains respirable crystallinesilica. While raw solid graniteis not a hazard, the dust produced during cutting, crushing, drilling, and polishing contains silica, which has been classified as a known human carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, and the National Toxicology Program.”
We cannot predict what will happen to our air quality, water quality and traffic overload, and neither can the quarryoperators guarantee what will happen.
What is important is that what happens cannot be undone. Please consider the well-being of your constituents, the people of Putnam County, and the well-being of the Lake Country we all love, and do not approve the petition to open a rock quarry in Putnam County.
Sincerely, Dan and Janet Kelhoffer Eatonton