The Douglas County Commission accepted Wednesday the 2015 review of a quarry north of Clinton Lake, while lauding staff’s efforts to develop a new maintenance agreement for a haul road to the site.

Douglas County Public Works Director Keith Browning told commissioners a new agreement negotiated with N.R. Hamm for the Hamm Buchheim Quarry would have the quarry pay the county 25 cents for every ton of rock transported from the 70-acre site on East 550 Road just north of Clinton Lake.

That payment would allow the county to treat the section of East 550 Road that Hamm uses to transport rock from the quarry with a more effective dust control “stabilization” method, Browning said.

The agreement would soon be ready for the County Commission’s consideration, Browning said. For their part, commissioners agreed it was an improvement over the county’s current dust control agreement with Hamm.

The review presented to commissioners was of Hamm’s 2015 compliance with a 1977 conditional use permit to operate the quarry, as well as with supplemental conditions added in 2014 after mining resumed at the long-idle site in 2012. There was a delay in forwarding the latest review to commissioners after neighbors identified a number of areas not in compliance with the added conditions, which required, among other things, the relocation of the quarry’s entry and the installation of fencing and berms.

The report commissioners received showed that those concerns had been addressed and that the quarry was in compliance with the original permit and supplemental conditions. Commissioners were not required to approve the report.

In addressing the commission, quarry neighbor Stephen Freidell said the original conditional use permit was nearly 40 years old, which was a much longer duration than the length of use permits now approved for quarry operations. He suggested the county and Hamm agree to a date for ending mining at the quarry, suggesting 50 years from the original 1977 as a shutdown date.

That would benefit the county as it would allow the development of the quarry and surrounding property, and would be a plus to Hamm because it could resell the property after its required reclamation, Freidell said.