Rock and roll: The noisy reality of living near a quarry

By Joan Tiplett

Pittsboro, NC – I just want to say good luck and I sincerely mean that. I live way close to the 3M quarry and it’s horrible! The dust is unbelievable and so is the rock grinding noise. Plus the blasts knock my pictures on the wall off level. No big deal on the pictures, but if I can feel the blast reverberation under my feet then we have potential structure issues. We hear the warning siren and the BOOM!

Luck Stone Pittsboro Plant (Source: Luck Stone Web site)

When this quarry was being planned our community over on 87 South went to the meetings in mass. We voiced our concerns and plainly stated we did not want them in our area. We got the usual response of “You’ll never know we are there.” 

They said the would plant trees all around and build hills around them  to block the noise and dust. Well that sure didn’t stop much.

Now let’s think about the dump truck traffic. They rarely stop when coming out to the highway so be very aware of them coming out. They scatter rocks on the highway with cover tarps or not.  We have had a lot of cracked windshields and chipped off paint from those rocks getting slug onto our vehicles.

Who pays for that? We do! 

Fight this new quarry with all you’ve got and I hope, but doubt it does any good.  We have a county of money grabbing politicians. 

It’s been that way a long long time.