Rutland Herald/Times Argus Sunday Magazine

Cover Story I: Deep Divisions

May 28, 2000

An old granite quarry in Sheffield reopens, leaving hard feelings and hard questions

By JOHN DILLON

Long before the ground shook last fall and 50-ton trucks began hauling gray stone from the hillside, the old granite quarry had ripped apart a rural Sheffield neighborhood in the Northeast Kingdom.

And in the process, the revival of the long-closed quarry has revealed familiar fault lines that mark Vermont's struggles with rural development: Jobs versus the environment, conflicts of interest and town politics, change versus status quo.

The tensions in Sheffield first rose when a small citizens' group began to fight the mining project overwhelmingly supported by town leaders. Then the opposition itself splintered as some members literally sold out to the quarry company. Friendships in this isolated Northeast Kingdom community - where people once watched each other's kids and worked together to maintain miles of wooded trails - were irreparably fractured.

"This brought out the worst in the townspeople," said Oliver Collins, who sold his house and land near the quarry and will move in June. "We had all been friends up there... I can't wait to get out of the whole mess."

Located just west of I-91 north of Lyndonville, Sheffield holds about 600 souls, along with a few former potato farms and no industry. The quarry is high on a conifer-covered ridge near the divide of the St. Lawrence and Connecticut River watersheds. Moose tracks bigger than soup bowls dot the logging roads. Winter lingers three weeks longer here than in the valley below.

Tucked beneath the ridge is a deep deposit of igneous rock. The stone is hard and gray and flecked with black mica, prized for monuments to mark the dead. In the early years of the last century, quarriers used horses to haul hand-cut blocks. The quarry was abandoned sometime in the early 1930s. The forest reclaimed the site and the holes long ago filled with water, providing refuge for breeding salamanders.

But then the global economy touched down on tiny Sheffield two years ago in the form of Barre Granite Quarries LLC, a company incorporated in Delaware, based in South Burlington and financed by a South African mining magnate. (See accompanying story.) The "Barre Granite" name is intended to offset its offshore roots and Northeast Kingdom location, as well as evoke the gray stone for which Barre is famous. Yet the quarry company does have one connection to the central Vermont stone industry: It has found allies among local stone cutters who say they need another supply to break the monopoly now enjoyed by Rock of Ages Corp., the publicly traded company that controls all the active granite quarries in Vermont.

Barre Granite Quarries wants to mine here for at least the next 25 years. If it clears its last legal hurdle, the Sheffield quarry will eventually yield 400,000 cubic feet of stone per year - roughly the production level of a large quarry operated by Rock of Ages in Barre Town. The hole planned for the Sheffield site will reach 100 feet deep while piles of waste rock will tower 80 feet above, according to Environmental Board testimony.

The company last year won an Act 250 land use permit that is now under appeal by a citizens group called Residents for Northeast Kingdom Preservation. Because the Environmental Board has in the past denied permits on appeal or substantially altered the permit conditions, developers usually halt work while an appeal is pending. But Barre Granite Quarries clearcut 25 acres last summer after the appeal was filed and began blasting to extract stone.

The opponents, who include a ginseng grower, a poet, a specialist in wild plants, and a family of horse-lovers, argue the noise of the quarry shatters the peaceful solitude of the area. They say a nearby rare cedar-swamp wetland could be harmed if the mining damages underground springs. They're concerned about the heavy trucks on the steep and winding back roads. They argue what is most precious about Sheffield - its quiet and wildness - will be lost forever if an industrial site is allowed on the remote ridge.

Galway Kinnell, a Pulitzer Prize winning poet who has lived for 40 years in a farmhouse about a mile across the valley from the site, said it's misleading to describe the new project as a simple "reactivation" of an old quarry. The noise and scale of a modern quarry operation will far exceed what took place there 70 years ago in the era of hand tools and horse carts, he said.

"More than anything, I hate to see the Northeast Kingdom eaten up hillside, by hillside, town by town," Kinnell said. "There's not too many places in the country like this part of the world, this part of Vermont. I think there's something precious about it that should be protected and preserved."

On the other side are many other Sheffield residents and town officials, who welcome the jobs and income the quarry will bring. "The overwhelming majority in this little town are not opposed to this, but are very frustrated with the opposition," Selectboard Chairman Max Aldrich said. "It seems so frustrating ... that this tiny group can make so many waves and make it so difficult for these people to get this up and running."

Barre Granite lawyer Dan Hershenson disputed the suggestion that the noise or traffic will be unbearable. The back roads are already traveled by large logging rigs, he said.

"And to argue that a granite quarry is going to generate noise not heard in the Northeast Kingdom is absurd," he said. "Anybody who understands logging operations with a chainsaw and skidder knows that is a noisy operation."

The impact on the immediate area will be minimal, Hershenson said. "The closest residence is a half-mile away, so if you're going to have a granite quarry in Vermont, I can't think of a better place to put it," he said.

Quarry politics

Along with splitting town residents, the quarry debate has revealed the sometimes cozy side of Sheffield governance. Aldrich, who works as a real estate agent and town road foreman, also has worked for the quarry company, according to Environmental Board testimony. Company director Mark Austin told the board he hired Aldrich to put up road signs and to conduct appraisals of local properties.

As the road foreman, Aldrich has reviewed the company's trucking plans. As selectman, he helped negotiate the 20 cents-per cubic foot "royalty" payment the company will pay the town for the stone it removes. As a real estate agent, Aldrich two years ago found 42.5 acres for the quarry company to buy. In that deal, he split a $4,950 commission with Joyce Wieselmann, a broker for Century 21 in St. Johnsbury who had listed the property for the seller, Wieselmann said.

"He (Aldrich) saw I had it listed. It was what his buyer (the quarry company) was looking for," she said.

Aldrich's quarry-related work has prompted some complaints that he's blurred the line between his private business and public duties. "How can that not be a conflict of interest?" asked Tony Sessions, who lives a half-mile from the site and is concerned about the quarry truck traffic and noise. "How can he be looking out for the town?"

The selectboard chairman has also testified on the company's behalf before the Environmental Board. Aldrich told the board that the royalty payments - which at peak production would bring $80,000 a year to the town - could be used to finance the new school or other projects. "It is a definite and distinct benefit for a town such as Sheffield," he said.

Aldrich said as selectboard chairman he's tried to faithfully represent the majority who favor the quarry. He said he has recused himself from voting on quarry issues, but acknowledged that selectmen did not formally vote to approve the royalty deal, despite its considerable ramifications for the town. The contract includes language that the payments address "all municipal impacts" from the quarry.

"We negotiated a contract... on behalf of the citizens of Sheffield," Aldrich said.

The selectboard chairman said his analysis of land values near the quarry was done for potential sellers, not for the company itself. And he said he earned his real estate commission on the land sale two years ago by obtaining the full listing price for the seller. "I felt I had absolutely no conflict of interest in that," he said.

The opponents aren't convinced. "He (Aldrich) is the leader and spokesman for the town at the same time having been an employee of the quarry," Kinnell said. "That doesn't seem right."

Divide and conquer

The Environmental Board, a seven-member panel that hears Act 250 appeals, will hold another hearing in June and then make its decision. Win or lose, there will be no real victors, Kinnell said.

"No matter how it comes out, it won't have a good result. The town has been divided, so whatever side prevails, the scars will remain," he said.

The fight has indeed turned nasty, a war of words that spilled over into vandalism and violence. One neighboring couple fighting the project, Nova Kim and Leslie Hook, said they have been harassed repeatedly. They've complained to the state police that assailants have twice fired shots at their trailer. They said that over the last year their mailboxes have been smashed, the axle assembly of their car tampered with and their chickens killed, the carcasses flung on the trailer roof or placed on their bed.

Kim, a Native American from the Osage tribe in the Midwest who wears a long braid down her back, is teacher of wild edible and medicinal plants. She shares her skills with people who visit her 142-acre retreat and sells wild plants to gourmet restaurants. The land where she lives is called the "E Sha 'N Traditional Living Learning Center," a place she said is sacred to Native Americans because of its headwaters location, native artifacts and rich diversity of plant species. The center - marked by four "spirit posts" and colorful Native American symbols - borders the quarry's property.

She said the attacks that began last year stem from her work against the project, or from basic bigotry.

"It's either the quarry, or racism, or both," she said.

Kinnell hasn't experienced the kind of harassment Kim says she's endured, although just last week someone spread garbage on his road. A veteran of the 1960s civil rights movement in the South, Kinnell said the Northeast Kingdom sometimes has a similar lawlessness. "It's like being in a land with no law enforcement," he said.

The quarry fight has also turned members of the opposition group against each other as some sold out to the granite company and signed sales contracts agreeing to muzzle their criticism. The quarry has even divided people within themselves.

Stephen Amos was the first to raise the alarm about what he once called the environmental "horrors" of the proposed mining operation. A biologist who works for the Fairbanks Museum in St. Johnsbury, Amos and his family lived for 13 years across the dirt road from the quarry site. He kept careful logs of the wildlife he found on the ridge, including a long-term inventory of the salamanders he discovered breeding in the abandoned quarry holes.

Amos was an original organizer of the opposition and was also the first quarry neighbor to sell out. He made his own peace with the project in the fall of 1998 when he agreed to sell his house and 59 acres to Barre Granite for $233,000. The company also promised to pay him another $10,000 to cover moving fees, the cost of transplanting his perennial plant collection and to dig a pond at his new home in Wheelock, according to his purchase and sale contract.

As a scientist who could testify about the quarry's potential impacts - and as a neighbor who would be directly affected by the proposed mining - Amos might have been a formidable opponent. But he's now a quarry booster. He said he's promised the company he won't help the opposition in the Act 250 appeal. And he now speaks glowingly about its promise to set aside land for a nearby deer yard to replace winter habitat destroyed for the quarry.

"My personal as well as my professional opinion is the quarry is not going to have a longstanding environmental impact there," he said.

Yet Amos said it was a wrenching decision to give up the fight and move. "I was reluctant to leave. I could have made their lives miserable. But there was absolutely nothing, in my mind or my wife's mind that would have stopped this from happening," he said. "It got to the point, for my family's sanity, we had to say this is enough."

Others in the neighborhood are bitter about the deal Amos struck with the company. They note his house was listed for town tax purposes at $76,000, and say the property is certainly not worth $233,000 with a quarry located across the road. Some accuse him of using his opposition to leverage a better deal for himself.

"He made a pretty hefty profit (on the property sale)," said Tony Sessions, who lives about 2,500 feet from the quarry. "That house is worth $150,000, top dollar."

The quarry company "played the divide and conquer game with neighbors," Sessions said. "It worked very well."

Amos insisted he got fair market value for his house. "I didn't walk away with a wad of money. The sale of that house allowed me to purchase another house and land of similar quality," he said.

Through the end of 1998 and into 1999, other opponents dropped out. One key member of the opposition, a retired judge from Massachusetts whose summer home lies along a road the company considered using, withdrew from the fight in exchange for the company's promise to use an alternative route.

Others offered up their opposition for cash. At least three property owners have signed purchase and sales contracts that include clauses barring the seller from opposing the quarry in Act 250 hearings. Oliver Collins, who lives down the road from Amos, renegotiated his deal with Barre Granite Quarries earlier this year, raising the sale price from $95,000 to $119,600.

Collins is moving his family to Irasburg. He said he'll miss the woods nearby where he hunted every fall. But he won't miss the animosity in Sheffield. "This has created problems between neighbors, problems between townspeople. ... We have been called greedy and everything else because we were fighting for a better contract," he said.

Kinnell, who watched the opposition group splinter and then re-form, regrets the corrupting influence that the money brought to those fighting the project.

"The whole thing is a puzzle to me, whether the (original) group was aiming for this sell-out, or whether it was a last resort," he said. "There was a reasonable expectation we could have won this case if they had all held together up there."

As the quarry company began striking deals with people "it divided the existing group," he said. "The scale of the payments was different for each individual - almost equivalent to that person's power to stop the quarry."

Competition and jobs

Quarry proponents say the project will benefit the public by providing money to the town and creating more jobs. It will also supply needed competition for the granite industry, they argue. Barre Granite Quarries LLC has worked closely with some in the Barre granite industry who complain that Rock of Ages Corp. in Barre Town has a monopoly on the prized gray stone.

With a lock on supply, Rock of Ages also can effectively control the price, said Jeff Martell, president of Granite Industries of Vermont, which employs 58 people in the stone trades.

"If there's competition involved, the price of the product - whether it's soap, granite or tires - will reflect the competition," he said.

Yet there seems little shortage of gray granite. Rock of Ages has supplies that will last for centuries. And granite, despite its weight and bulk, is often shipped around the world to meet demand. Rock from South Africa, India, and China is routinely polished and shaped in Barre. Martell said he buys gray stone imported from China for lower prices than Rock of Ages charges.

"We're now able to bring in stuff from overseas and land it here for less than what we're paying to get it off the hill (in Barre)," he said.

So why does he want a new Vermont supply?

Martell said the smaller blocks from China cost more to process than the big chunks of raw stone sold by Rock of Ages. And he said he wants to nurture the Vermont industry. "Basically I'm a Vermonter. We would like to see the product coming from Vermont. Vermont granite has a reputation that is 100 years old. We can command a better price. If we bring in Chinese product and process it and manufacture it, that adds credence to that being a good product," he said. "And the Chinese, with their lower labor costs, would eventually put us out of business."

The Sheffield quarry, at its top production levels, would employ about 20 people. But Rock of Ages quarry division president Jon Gregory said demand for gray stone is declining - the monument-buying public increasingly prefers the colored stone not found in Vermont. So Sheffield's job gain would be Barre's job loss, he said.

"If they employ 20 people up there, we'll just employ 20 people less. The fact is, the market is shrinking," Gregory said.

Martell testified before the Environmental Board that hundreds of jobs are at stake in the Sheffield quarry debate. "The actual benefit of the Sheffield quarry will be the preservation of approximately 500 jobs directly in the Barre district by manufacturers like myself," he told the board.

But in an interview, Martell said Barre could lose other jobs if the Sheffield quarry goes into full production. He also agreed that the market for gray stone is shrinking.

"I think it (the job situation) is a trade-off," he said. "It (the new quarry) would lessen the jobs at Rock of Ages and increase jobs in Sheffield. Potentially, over time, another source of gray (granite) will marginally increase jobs, but it will be another eight to 10 years."

The opponents' dilemma
In the Sheffield Square neighborhood, few are concerned about the economics of the granite industry. Nova Kim and her partner Leslie Hook want to be left alone to work in the woods and to hold traditional healing ceremonies at the E Sha 'N Center. Their neighbors Tony and Alice Sessions just want to move away. They say their mobile home located at the corner of Quarry Road lies too close to the 20 granite trucks a day that will rumble to and from the quarry site.

Tony Sessions is a blunt-speaking, fireplug-shaped man who has grown weary and discouraged about the Act 250 process. He believes the company will win its appeal. "I think he (company director Mark Austin) is going to do what he's going to do and the state is going to let him get away with it," he said.

Sessions said he isn't against the quarry itself. He describes himself as a die-hard capitalist who believes property owners should be allowed to do what they want with their land - so long as it doesn't harm someone else. But since the traffic and noise will lower the value of his home, Sessions wants to be bought out, just like Amos and the others. But the company has refused to put an offer in writing, he said.

"My property values are gone. This is an older mobile home. In the best of times it's hard to sell it. You move a quarry 2,500 feet down the road and you'll never get rid of it," he said. "I don't see any reason in the world why this guy (Austin), if he paid what he paid for the Amos place, why he can't pay us."

Amos, the biologist turned quarry booster, said opponents who want to escape the quarry noise should leave. "If (Kinnell) wants peace and quiet, maybe he should move again," he said.

Unlike Amos, Kinnell has no bargaining chips to trade away. Nor does he, at age 73, want to move. He savors the peace on his hillside, a setting that helped inspire much of his poetry. In his 40 years in Sheffield, he's restored a 160-year-old farmhouse. He originally bought one acre but has slowly, piece by piece, acquired the 200 surrounding acres of the original farm.

He rebuts the economic argument for the quarry by saying that if the mine scars the rural hillside, other, more desirable businesses will be less likely to choose Sheffield for environmental or quality-of-life reasons.

"It's possible a de-facto industrial zone could take place up there," he said.

Kinnell travels frequently as he teaches and gives poetry readings around the country. He said that over the last 50 years, he's seen many once-beautiful places destroyed by development. One hundred years from now, people may look at the Northeast Kingdom and wonder how they let it go, he said.

"It does come down to certain values: Your right to do whatever you want with your property, which is almost limitless, versus you as a caretaker for the land during your lifetime," he said. As the land's caretaker, "you should leave it as fine, or finer, than when you acquired it."

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See Also Sheffield Quarry Wins Act 250 Approval and Sheffield Granite Quarry in Doubt.