Carmeuse Lime and Stone, the Belgium-based mining company with operations in Clear Brook and Middletown, has filed a height waiver request with Frederick County for a new silo and screen tower at its Middletown quarry, according to a company official.
The waiver request includes a proposed silo of 72 feet, a proposed conveyor height to feed the silo of 85 feet, a proposed bucket elevator height of 87 feet and a proposed screen tower height of 90 feet, county documents indicate.
Carmeuse’s Middletown quarry is situated west of Middletown near the Shenandoah County border.
“We’re looking to construct a new screening building and a new storage bin inside our existing processing facility at our Middletown location,” said local operations manager Logan Thompson.
The height waiver request is scheduled to be considered by the Frederick County Planning Commission on Wednesday. The meeting begins at 7 pm
County zoning ordinance requirements state that the height of structures in extractive manufacturing (EM) districts normally cannot exceed 45 feet. The Board of Supervisors can waive the 45-foot height limitation, provided it will not negatively impact adjacent uses.
According to Thompson, the new structures would be “nested” in with the quarry’s existing processing operations and, in each case, would not be greater in height than the tallest structure in the facility currently.
“We worked hard with our engineering team to ensure that none of this new equipment would be any workshop than the current tallest structure, which is 90 feet,” Thompson said.
“We nested this new equipment inside the existing operation to minimize any changes to the surrounding viewshed,” he added.
The new equipment driving the height waiver request was characterized by Thompson as being part of a project that would allow the Middletown quarry to make and store more of its “limestone chip” product while providing customers more access to the product.
He said the project wouldn’t increase production any more than what the “site has seen historically.” He added the “hope is that this just brings the site back to pre-COVID business levels.”
Carmeuse’s Middletown quarry is smaller than the Clear Brook operation in terms of the scale of production. The Middletown quarry, which is geared toward the production of milled limestone, has 22 employees.
Carmeuse is the largest mining operation in Frederick County. Its presence has not been without controversy. In 2008, the Board of Supervisors approved a request to rezone 400 acres near Middletown for mining by the company, despite strong opposition from some residents concerned about the environment and losing Civil War battlefield land.
Last year, the company — which has a North American headquarters in Pittsburgh — successfully rezoned 392 acres in Clear Brook for a future quarry about 1.25 miles from a limestone mine near Clearbrook Park amid strong opposition from some residents. The new mine is expected to open in eight to 15 years, when the existing mine reaches the end of its lifespan.
Some of the complaints voiced last year by residents near the Clear Brook quarry focused on a towering 150-foot mound of quarry debris that’s visible from Martinsburg Pike (US 11).
Carmeuse offered to reduce the height of the stockpile by 50 feet in the rezoning application that the Board of Supervisors approved last November for the future mine.
According to Thompson, Carmeuse has “already started work on that, as we committed to.”
“So we started moving some material in accordance with that proffer, and we’re working internally and with the Virginia Department of Energy on our design on where those relocated materials will go,” Thompson said.
