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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us March 22, 2005 Hearing on proposed quarry delayed by applicant By Robert Plain Ashland Daily Tidings The county hearing on a proposed rock quarry on Dead Indian Memorial Road has been pushed back to June, giving the applicant a chance to solidify his arguments while opponents hope to sustain their momentum through the delay. Applicant Joe Dauenhauer asked a Jackson County Hearings Officer for a postponement at the Monday hearing. The hearing was rescheduled for June 20 at 10:30 a.m. "We were simply not prepared," Dauenhauer said. "Some things were pretty vague and we need to do some research to look into it." Roughly 90 people attended the planning hearing on Monday, according to Jackson County planning staff. A contingent of his neighbors, a group called Dead Indian Memorial Neighbors led by Tom Kane and Laurel Miller, has organized an opposition to Dauenhauer's business proposal. "Our attorney said he has never seen a courtroom so packed," Kane said. "The tactic was to diffuse our momentum but none of us bought that." Kane said that in addition to the issues of road safety and ecological preservation that would be raised by another neighborhood rock quarry, he is troubled by the fact that Dauenhauer's application also gives him the ability to operate an asphalt batch plant on his land sometime down the road. "What about the unforeseeable future?" said Kane, who said Dauenhauer had agreed not to operate a batch plant in the "foreseeable" future. "He's willing to lease it out to multiple mining companies. He doesn't know if they would want a batch plant." Dauenhauer said he is not interested in this kind of operation, which he believes is the main reason his neighbors oppose his plans. "We are not going to have an asphalt plant or a 24-hour operation," he said, adding that his son, who will eventually oversee the property, would abide by the family decision. "They don't trust us when we say we are never going to do it." Dauenhauer said they way the permitting process works, if you apply for a rock quarry then you automatically get approval for a batch plant as well. "The way the law reads, you can't separate the two," he said. "In other words, if you get approval for a rock quarry, that comes with approval for an asphalt plant, too. We definitely don't want it and will never do it, but people feel if the property is ever sold it could happen." Kane said a number of people at the hearing testified about the inherent dangers the operation, and the ensuing trucking of its byproduct, would cause to Dead Indian Memorial Road. "It's a dangerous place for an operation like this," he said, noting that one of his neighbors testified about the many road fatalities that occur on Dead Indian Memorial Road. He called the road that leads to many recreational trails and lakes "one of the most dangerous in Jackson County." "Twenty years ago there may have been a lot of logging trucks (on this road) but there were never this many," he said, pointing out that one woman testified that she counted 54 rock trucks driving up and down Dead Indian Memorial Road in one hour. "It didn't get as much usage. There weren't as many people up here then." DailyTidings.com Home Page Archives | Revels | Classifieds | Real Estate Guide | Weather | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2005 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Deep Muscle Stimulator Ceramic Piggy Banks FREE Entertainment Guide Women's & Men's Slippers Accelerate Weightloss Products Backpacks Generic Viagra Vegas Travel Guide Search Engine Optimization Sportsbook Absinthe Supply Student Loans Hotel & Airline Reservations African Safari Hammocks Helzberg Diamonds Online Casinos Community Bonus Casino King of Spirits ink cartridges Mortgage Calculator Security Systems Mailing Lists Click Here Advertisement .:Advertisements:. Site Search: RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams