Homeowners Dig In to Fight ‘Quarry’

Terri H. Sargeant interrupted her career to care for two small children in a spacious new two-story house in Cowan Hills, a neighborhood in east Orange where property values are at a premium and tranquility is assured.

But that serenity is being threatened by a development company’s plan to turn nearby hillsides into a veritable quarry, where boulders would be crushed and 300,000 cubic yards of rock and dirt would be hauled away for eventual construction of another upscale housing tract a few blocks from Sargeant’s home.

Pennhill Development Co. of Tustin has estimated that it could take 14 months or longer to haul away the materials. And that could mean as many as 200 trucks daily traveling through the neighborhood of quiet, winding streets.

But Sargeant, who quit her job last year in the planning department of the county’s Environmental Management Agency, did a little investigating among the city’s tract maps and discovered that the developer had not disclosed those hauling details to the city of Orange. Nor did it have the necessary permits. In January, she began to organize her neighborhood and four others surrounding the approximately 175-acre development site to protest the project.

Sargeant’s letter to the city’s mayor and subsequent letters from other residents in late January and early February prompted the City Council to order a staff investigation. The council also has scheduled a hearing Tuesday on the complaints.

The council directive already has sparked meetings between the developer and city staff. Robert Michelson, a consultant to Pennhill, said the company will submit a new plan that may prevent the long-term hauling of rock out of the area. That plan likely will mean seeking city approval to increase the number of homes to be built on the site, he said.

But Mayor Jess F. Perez said the council will not be pressured into a quick resolution of the problem and predicted that Tuesday’s hearing will not be the last on the issue.

Unhappy residents claim that noise from the rock crusher would be too loud and that dust from the trucks would fill the neighborhoods. Moreover, they argue that noisy trucks would be traveling through Canyon View Avenue, a winding, disjointed street that links the quiet neighborhoods to the main traffic arteries of Newport Boulevard and Chapman Avenue.

“There are small children in this neighborhood and that (the truck traffic) would be a serious concern,” said Sargeant, whose husband owns a small engineering firm.

William Earnest, who lives in the Orange Hills neighborhood just west of the proposed Pennhill development, said the plan to haul the materials surprised residents. The five housing tracts surrounding the proposed site are 5 years old or less, and residents thought the new housing tract would not cause them undue hardship, he said.

“At the time, we couldn’t see anything that would be detrimental to our neighborhoods,” Earnest said.

Sargeant said her main objection is that residents were not advised by anyone of the developer’s plan. And in her investigation of the project, she said she discovered that Pennhill does not have proper permits to proceed with the hauling of the rock and dirt.

“I only oppose the quarry on the grounds that they want to impose this on the neighborhood without proper permits,” she said. “If they have to do this, they have to give us access and open it up to the people.”

Because of her experience in the county planner’s office, Sargeant took it upon herself to examine the proposed tract map files kept at the city’s engineering and planning departments. From her research she learned that Pennhill only had city approval “to build houses and to move dirt around,” not haul it away.

With the help of leaders of neighboring homeowner associations, such as Earnest, she began a letter-writing campaign to City Council members, demanding more attention and more details of the plans to haul the rock and dirt from the area.

In a Jan. 31 letter to Perez, Sargeant said that when the previous owner of the new housing tract, the M. D. Janes Co., submitted plans to the city, there was no mention of “the possibility of removal of material from the site, nor was the presence of a rock crusher brought up.”

Rock hauling would create serious environmental and traffic concerns for the neighborhoods, Sargeant and Earnest said.

Although the City Council has indicated that it will not decide on a plan to deal with the excess rock and dirt at the new tract at Tuesday’s hearing, it has become clear that angry protests of the neighborhoods are drawing serious attention.

City Engineer Gary Johnson said the city is seeking an alternative and has asked Pennhill to find one. Johnson said the city was surprised to learn that so much rock and dirt would be transported out of the proposed housing tract.

“I think it was one of those things that sneaked through the cracks,” he said.

An environmental impact report was never required for the project because it was never one identified as having an impact on neighboring residents, he said.

The “excess material was never identified as a problem,” he said. “But I think some of the concerns the citizens have voiced are valid.”

Both Perez and Councilman Don E. Smith said the City Council was not presented with enough information when Pennhill submitted plans for its housing tract and later applied for a grading permit for the site.

“I don’t think we really understood all the hauling that was to be done,” said Smith, who last month asked council members to postpone a decision on the Pennhill project until the company provided more information.

Pennhill consultant Michelson said the company never intended to mislead the city or the residents of east Orange. He said that when Pennhill bought the property from the M. D. Janes Co. last year, it got a surprise. Company officials, he said, “discovered an imbalance in the amount of dirt. It was a bit larger than was intended.”

But Pennhill “is committed to get the best resolution possible,” he said.

Michelson said the company is trying to scale back the hauling of rock and material as much as possible. It also has scrapped plans to install a rock crusher on the site.

“But there will have to be some hauling. There is always some of that with every project. But perhaps we can cut it down to three or four months,” he said.

To minimize the amount of excess rock and dirt to be moved, Michelson said Pennhill officials will ask for city approval to increase the tract’s density from 85 to 91 homes, which are projected to sell in the $275,000 to $325,000 range.

If the city grants additional housing units, then the developer could use much of the excess rock and dirt from two hillsides to fill a canyon on the south side of the proposed tract, where the added homes would be built. Then most of the rock and dirt would not have to be hauled away.

Perez, however, expressed doubt about that plan.

“Right now, I’m not sure I would go for a trade-off of (more homes) for less hauling,” he said. “There will be more study, and I want to emphasize that no decision to approve has been reached.”

Meanwhile, Pennhill president Robert Rippe said the company is anxious to resolve the problem with the city and residents as soon as possible so it can proceed with the project.

“The interest clock is running,” Rippe said. “But we’re sympathetic to any issues that are of concern to neighbors, and we are pursuing remedies.”