The fate of a proposal to expand a stone quarry at Oak Bay lies with provincial Environment and Local Government Minister Jeff Carr.
     The Northern Group of Companies based in Grand Falls wants to open more land for quarrying at the end of the Strang Road over the objections of Oak Bay and Waweig residents who wish the operation would shut down. Northern Group project manager Ian Underhill says that Northern Construction follows best industry practices and abides by the conditions in its licence to operate.
J     oan Despres, who lives 400 metres away from the quarry on the Hills Point Road, worries about her well and says that the windows in her house shake when the crew at the quarry is blasting.
     Terry MacMillan, who lives across the Waweig River from the quarry, says her house "just trembled" during blasting last year. Dust from crushing rock and fumes from the asphalt plant come up the Waweig River and force her indoors, she says.
     Jake brakes from trucks rumbling by on the Strang Road awaken him as early as 4 a.m. when the quarry is busy, says Tony Blair, who lives in the last house down the Strang Road. "It's more like 5 o'clock," says his wife Lugene, sitting at the picnic table outside their mini‑home.
     Last year the company withdrew its application to expand the Oak Bay quarry in the face of community objections, including 231 names on a petition that Despres says took two days to collect.
     Southwest New Brunswick Service Commission Planning Director Alex Henderson chaired a meeting at the Oak Bay Hall in June this year to hear objections to the revised proposal. He made a recommendation that it be approved with a number of terms and conditions. As a planner he looks for "fair and reasonable" accommodations between competing interests.
     The Strang Road, turning off route 170 near the Hills Point Road, provides access to this quarry, but motorists can see it driving west on the new divided highway as they approach the bridge over the Waweig River. The Strang Road ends close to the quarry gates behind the highway scales at Waweig on the new Route 1, but Underhill says the government would not allow trucks from the quarry to haul directly to the limited access four‑lane highway. The quarry is open for business from May to November, but the rock crusher and asphalt plant operate for much shorter periods, Underhill says.
     In the absence of large government road‑building projects, Northern Construction stockpiles crushed rock at the quarry to meet local demand. Underhill says, "A lot of the material that comes out of there is being used by local small contractors that need building materials for their little projects around town," such as driveways, septic systems and landscaping, along with patching municipal streets. The material gets used mostly in Charlotte County, and none is shipped out of New Brunswick.
     The quarry employs about two full-time seasonal Charlotte County people and more on the crushing crew as needed, Underhill says, adding, "It's all entirely market driven. A big, big, big project can eat a big hole. Small projects don't use it up as fast."
     Underhill points out that Northern Construction has yet to crush rock at Oak Bay this year and has run the asphalt plant very little, just to supply local small contractors if at all. The quarry, which opened about 10 years ago, might run out of material in 15 years, with the expansion possibly adding another 10, he says. "We try to be good neighbours and we try to not disrupt people's lives with what we are doing. We try to hear their concerns and try our best to follow them, and we are regulated."
     Henderson's recommendations include larger buffer zones, restrictions on hours of operations and keeping the asphalt plant where it is rather than moving to the new area. Some neighbours, at least, are not convinced. "Last year we went through this whole thing, and everybody complained and here we are right at square one needing to complain again," Despres says. "We don't want a quarry in our community."
     "It's just so sad that this quarry is operating as it is, and heaven forbid if they do get to expand, it's just going to be that much more dust, that much more fumes," MacMillan says.
     "The bottom line is, if you were to ask the people if they want the quarry here, they would say, 'No,'" Tony Blair says.
     "I'm feeling deflated, and I think that's what they're hoping, that everybody will just forget about it," Lugene Blair says. "If they would just stay the way they are, we would tolerate it."
     Henderson argues for "rural residential districts" so that people living in the country would not find themselves suddenly next to quarries or other resource‑type enterprises. He would keep such residential districts away from, for example, sources of good rock for building roads. "It needs to be a balance, and it needs to be done in a carefully planned way," he says.