Tilcon Ceases Millington Quarry Operations

Tilcon, NY announced in a letter to the press and to the township on May 4 that, effective immediately, they are discontinuing their operations at Millington Quarry on Stonehouse Road.

Tilcon had been leasing the site for the past 11 years, and said that the closure is due to declining economic conditions for their products.

"It's not surprising, since we have understood they have in fact stopped quarrying some time ago," Mayor Scott Spitzer said. The mayor said that while the quarry operators had been continuing to dig for and stockpile stone until recently, it had been a while since shipments were being taken out. The township also questioned the quarry operators about a notice on their office window saying that they were stopping their operation within the last several weeks.

With Tilcon no longer conducting quarrying operations, the use of the property will be left to the owners, Millington Quarry Inc., to decide how to utilize the area. The site is currently a two-acre residential zone, with a maximum developable area that would result in about 40 single-family residences surrounding a lake, should the property owners pursue that route. "It's up to the owners to put in a subdivision application as to what they would like to see," Spitzer said. No timeframe has been indicated for how long it might be before the owners decide how to use the property.

Tilcon said that they will continue to assist in their obligations to remediate the site. "They still have continuing obligations and from the township's perspective, our objectives are that we want to see the property have no more fill being brought in, and we want the entire property tested," Spitzer said.

Initial testing of the site by Icon Engineering, which was hired by the township to conduct the analysis, indicated that the fill brought in to the quarry might have some level of contamination. Higher than average arsenic levels were found in the site's surface water, and debris and other contaminants were found in the soil.

The township is currently in a mediation phase of litigation between the quarry owners and operators over the quality of the fill. "Our objectives haven't changed," Spitzer said. "Our desire is that we protect the health of our citizens and to be sure that the property is clean."