Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, June 5, 1990                   TAG: 9006050408
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-1   EDITION: BEDFORD/FRANKLIN 
SOURCE: DAVID M. POOLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

LANDOWNERS FAIL TO BLOCK QUARRY SITE

A Lynchburg judge has rejected the group's contention that Franklin County's zoning administrator exceeded her authority by exempting Rockydale Quarries from land-use regulations at its proposed Jacks Mountain quarry.

Cundiff's ruling - outlined in a May 22 letter to attorneys in the case - leaves landowners known as The Friends for Jacks Mountain Preservation one last legal appeal.

Edward Natt, a Roanoke attorney, said Monday that the group had not decided whether to continue to fight against the proposed quarry.

Rockydale is seeking to extract up to 300,000 tons of rock per year from an open-pit quarry on Jacks Mountain, a wooded hill near the Glade Hill community.

In the summer of 1988, some 2,000 residents of the Glade Hill community signed petitions asking the Franklin County Board of Supervisors to keep the quarry out of the area by denying a special-use permit.

Last August, however, the Franklin County Board of Zoning Appeals ruled that Rockydale could proceed with the quarry without first obtaining the permit. The board agreed with then-Zoning Administrator Lynn Johnson Donihe that Rockydale was exempt from local land-use regulations because the company had bought the land and conducted seismic tests before Franklin County adopted a zoning ordinance in May 1988.

The Friends of Jacks Mountain Preservation argued that Rockydale had acted in bad faith by applying for mining permits just hours before the ordinance was passed.

The group could ask Cundiff to schedule a hearing to determine if the Board of Zoning Appeals was justified in its decision to exempt Rockydale from land-use regulations.