MARQUETTE — The Marquette Township Planning Commission on Wednesday approved a special-use permit for a quarry along County Road 550.

James Storti of Marquette Mineral LLC, based in Iron River, made the request to the commission, which held a public hearing on the matter on Wednesday.

The hard-rock quarry producing various aggregate materials on a vacant parcel of land west of County Road 550, and north and east of the former We Energies fly ash haul road, is to be called the FA MQT 550 Quarry. The site is in the Resource Production zone, which allows for extraction of Earth products.

“Extraction of Earth products, whether sand or gravel aggregate, is a special temporary use in the township,” said Jason McCarthy, township planning and zoning administrator, who noted that as with other special uses that travel with the property, the permit would have a sunset on it once the site is “mined out.”

The operation plan calls for on-site bedrock material being blasted loose, and then sorted and processed at the quarry, using conventional crushing equipment. Also noted in the plan is that the quarry would provide another aggregate source to northern Marquette Township, which is rapidly expanding to the Forestville region. Additionally, no additional traffic impacts are expected since existing roads allow for this type of use.

The application for the quarry states that a forested buffer will remain along the boundaries of the parcel to obstruct the view of operations, and dust will be mitigated through onsite watering during crushing and hauling as necessary. Tree and vegetative buffers will be left in place to dampen noise, and operations will be maintained during daytime hours.

Blasting is expected to take place one to two times per week periodically throughout the year during regular hours of operation.

The special-use permit applies to only 17.88 acres on the property.

The permit was OK’d under these conditions:

≤ The hours of operation will be limited to 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays, which is consistent with other active extraction permits in the township.

≤ The applicant will secure a stormwater permit from the Marquette Township Department of Public Works as needed.

≤ The applicant will secure any required permits from the Marquette County Road Commission for road usage and driveway construction.

≤ The application will secure a sediment control and soil erosion permit from the Marquette County Building Codes Department.

≤ Adequate dust-control measures shall be implemented.

≤ The reclamation plan must be implemented within two years of ceasing operations.

≤ Operations will be considered ceased if there are over 365 days of non-operations.

≤ The permit will sunset 30 years after approval.

“He’s looking to keep this kind of ‘out of sight, out of mind,’ so even on the road frontage, you wouldn’t see a whole lot of activity other than the driveway, which would be required to gain access through a Marquette County Road Commission driveway permit,” McCarthy said about Storti.

McCarthy said the Noquemanon Trail Network’s main vein on its ski races goes through the area south of the fly ash haul road, but Storti provided verbal agreements indicating his willingness to work with the NTN, trail advocates, city of Marquette officials and township staff to secure a greenway corridor through the area.

Storti acknowledged that he did make those verbal commitments to keep any land along the NTN untouched.

“Leave it the way it is until we see what we want to do, and we can come to figure out a mutual agreement between everybody to keep the use available, since I bought it,” he told the commission.

Storti also said that unless a company does not own or have access to a gravel pit in Marquette County, it will not be competitive in the bidding process until it is one of the few local contractors that owns a pit.

“That’s why we would like to put our own option to get our own materials here be competitive to bid in the area on the projects that come up in Marquette County alone,” he said.