On Aug. 18, 2016, it only took about a half a day’s work for the Rockhill Quarry in East Rockhill to haul out 500 tons of stone, the bare minimum to maintain its active mining permit with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. Twenty-four trucks were loaded with stone ranging from 20 to 23 tons, according to records the quarry provided to the DEP, totaling up to 529 tons, and driven to a scale at a Tinicum quarry about 30 minutes away.
The annual ritual was an important one for the quarry after it largely shutdown in the late 1970s. Keeping the permit active enabled the quarry to return to full operations in late December 2017, without going through a new, time-consuming application process and grandfathered around regulations put into place since.
When the quarry suddenly sprang to life that month, it caught many neighbors by surprise, as a sudden imposition on their quiet lives in a heavily wooded area north of the Pennridge Airport. They packed municipal meetings and hearings, expressed concerns over quality of life, environmental contamination and truck traffic. But they also questioned if the quarry truly removed 500 tons every year since the 1980s, as many said they recalled no such work and thought the site fully abandoned.
Now, DEP documents reviewed by this news organization raise new questions about the annual removal. Chief among the documents are scale receipts from 2010 to 2017, which show unusual repetition of weights from trucks hauling stone from the quarry in 2010 and 2011.