The County Line
The current community controversy over the proposed gravel pit along Allisonville Road near Potters Bridge is a classic case of industrial development approaching residential neighborhoods. It has happened many times in many places in the county, but resolution can be found.
Beaver Materials, which is hoping to extract gravel, is a locally-owned firm with a reputation for being a good community supporter.
On the other side of this controversy are established residents of the growing Noblesville community. They don’t want a gravel pit near their homes. This is quite understandable, and certainly they have developed a clever slogan: Don’t leave it to Beaver.
Public officials are somewhat non-committal as one might expect. It’s a hot potato, and in this case, it is not likely to cool off soon.
So, it is time to look for an answer.
It is well known that the White River valley is underlaid with major deposits of gravel and stone. This material is needed for our thriving construction industry.
The question arises as to whether gravel could be found further upstream where there is no major residential development. Perhaps Beaver could find another site there and get the stone they need without disturbing an existing neighborhood.
It’s just a thought for which we will have to leave it to Beaver.
I wonder whether Carmel’s experience with imi could help people picture the likely “before” and “after”. I haven’t researched this and am writing strictly from memory, but sometime within the last 25 years, imi closed a pit south of 116th St. in Carmel. I don’t know how long imi operated there before closing that site, building up berms, planting trees and (I think ) leaving a body of water where the empty pit once stood. I believe imi moved its active operations just south of 96th St. near Gray Rd. There has been a lot of commercial development in Carmel on 96th St. and, somewhat surprisingly to me, a beautiful neighborhood was built around a body of water on the west edge of imi’s new site. The houses there are beautiful & the development was fully built out and occupied in no time. I have not lived by either of those locations and can’t comment on the volume of increased truck traffic and related noise and dust. Perhaps Beaver’s business isn’t as similar to imi’s as I’m assuming; but if they are alike, the experience in Carmel might be instructive. I suspect Carmel land use officials would have set limits on what imi could do, and when and how they could do it. Whether at the city, county or state levels, there must have been remediation requirements for the site imi made look park-like, at least from a car’s eye-view when I drive past that area. I am not supportIng or opposing the location where Beaver would like to harvest gravel In Noblesville, but thought a real-life example From the recent past in Carmel could be instructive (again, if and to the extent imi and Beaver operate similar businesses).