Borough staff outline gravel supply limits and regulatory barriers to opening new pits
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Summary
Borough resource staff described limited high‑quality gravel supplies, strong transport and access costs, and restrictive code provisions (including water‑table mining rules and reclamation enforcement) that impede establishing new material sites; staff proposed targeted geotechnical work and potential code revisions.
Borough staff briefed the Assembly on Dec. 16 about current and prospective borough‑owned gravel sources, the quality differences among deposits, and code provisions that affect whether and how those sources can be developed.
Emerson Krueger, the borough's resource manager in land management, said most borough deposits are low‑quality, fine‑grained marine or glacial deposits that are frost‑susceptible and require washing or heavy trucking to produce class A fill. He highlighted existing borough sites (Alsop Pit, Beaver Road, Meadow Lakes, a Parks‑Highway site) and noted that only a small fraction of borough land contains class A material suitable for major construction projects. Krueger described a stepped approach: preliminary sampling and targeted geotechnical investigations to identify material quality and quantity, then permitting and contracting for extraction.
Planning Director Alex Strahan identified regulatory hurdles. The borough's gravel code ties approvals to comprehensive‑plan consistency and includes strict protections for mining into the water table, carrying lengthy monitoring and permitting requirements that raise costs and discourage applications (the planning director said the borough has received zero water‑table mining applications since 2007). Strahan proposed revisiting the code to allow a more nuanced approach that balances environmental safeguards and the need for clean fill.
Assembly members and residents raised reclamation enforcement, permit expiration dates, and options including river dredging or prioritizing rail‑accessible sources. Staff said monitoring is performed by code‑compliance officers and that a geotechnical investigation contract for a parcel between Caswell Creek and Kishwittinga River was on the consent agenda; the assembly later postponed that consent item for additional information. Krueger asked that the assembly consider funding targeted geotechnical work (he cited a roughly $45,000 estimate to evaluate one site) if members wanted a fuller inventory of developable class A fill in high‑growth areas.
