St. Mary's County Board of Appeals OKs Chaney Enterprises' Loveville gravel mine with conditions

The Saint Mary's County Board of Appeals on April 21 voted to approve CUAP 21-0026, the Loveville gravel-mining conditional-use application for a 168.4-acre, six-phase operation owned by South Star Limited Partnership and proposed to be operated by Chaney Enterprises. The board approved the application with conditions including a maximum of 100 loaded truck trips per day, weekday hours, Saturday maintenance hours, required local and state approvals, and state-compliant reclamation.

The permit matter matters because it permits large-scale extractive activity in the Rural Preservation District near Friendship School Road in Leonardtown and triggers additional state reviews (Maryland Department of the Environment and the St. Mary's County Soil Conservation District). The permit will affect local traffic, wetlands buffers, and water use while establishing conditions the board said must be satisfied before and during operations.

The applicant sought county conditional-use approval under Chapter 25 of the county's Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance for Use Type 82 (extractive industry). The project described in staff materials and the applicant's presentation calls for a six-phase gravel mine totaling 168.4 acres (phase sizes listed in the application as 29.0, 16.5, 30.0, 41.7, 22.4 and 28.8 acres). The applicant said the site would be worked in roughly 10-acre compartments, with concurrent mining and reclamation of adjacent areas; topsoil would be stockpiled and then respread as part of reclamation.

County staff and the applicant told the board that state…