Twice as much aggregate pouring into plant sends noise, dust into Green neighborhood

GREEN — Ronelle Brown has lived a stone’s throw from a concrete and asphalt plant for 22 years, enduring dust storms and the racket, but the fallout never got so bad as it did two weeks ago.

During this time, LTM Inc. doubled its operations and stockpiles of aggregate poured in its storage yard, day and night, to feed a resurfacing project on Highway 42 between Tenmile and Camas Valley.

Each delivery of rock brought more dust to the yard, and each scoop from a front-end loader or press by the stone-smasher kicked out more dust.

“You couldn’t sit outside and relax; at night you could smell it in the air,” Brown said.

Brown lives in Western Star Mobile Estates, off Old Highway 99 South. Her mobile home and about a dozen others sit near the edge of the trailer park’s property line with LTM, which has rock loaded on a conveyor system fewer than 80 yards away.

The unique living situation next to an industrial plant is usually tolerable for Western Star’s residents, but when LTM ramped up operations the last couple of weeks of July — exacerbated by a due south wind — everything came to a head.

“They let us know right away that they were unhappy,” said Chris Doan, operations manager for LTM. “It was our largest week of production ever.”

That week the plant mixed 21,000 tons of asphalt. A normal week before then was 10,000 tons.

The plant kept a water tender rolling to spray the yard and knock down the dust, but it wasn’t enough to match the 90-degree heat and constant wind. Nor were the trees.

Two years ago, LTM had planted a row of fir trees in front of the chain-link fence on the property line with Western Estates. But the trees, spaced about 10 feet apart from one another, haven’t yet closed the gap — or blocked the dust and the wind.

“I wish we could just snap our fingers and these trees would be 20 feet taller and bushier,” said Mike Flewelling, a safety coordinator for LTM.

Flewelling stayed in contact with Brown and other nearby residents during the plant’s record-week of production, and was well aware that LTM could do more to prevent another dust-over.

“I’ve driven through there and I’ve seen (the dust),” he said. “But we do try to be good neighbors.”

So LTM is working on a new solution. At the edge of its aggregate stockpiles, it’s hanging a 30-foot-tall, 300-foot-long spray curtain that will block winds and capture dust particles in the moisture. About every 8 feet, at the top of the curtain, will be a sprinkler that will wash water down and keep it wet during operations.

“I just hope it works,” Brown said.

Anna Kemmerer, an environmental specialist with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality who has also inspected LTM’s facilities, said asphalt and concrete plants don’t have to uphold a standard for dust containment, but should make sure they are not a nuisance to neighbors.

In LTM’s case, Kemmerer said the plant is doing a good job of trying to reconcile the situation.

“I think they’re doing what they need to do,” she said.

The DEQ, Kemmerer said, would only have taken issue with LTM if it had refused to cooperate with its neighbor.

In a few days, LTM will have a curtain hanging at its side to catch dust the way nets on the side of golf courses catch errant balls. Except it will be wet.

“It’s going to be something like that, but on a bigger scale,” Flewelling said.



• You can reach reporter Adam Pearson at 957-4213 or by e-mail at apearson@newsreview.info.