County nearing legal action to force cleanup at old quarry

So they're handing the case over to the County Attorney's Office for possible legal action, said Beth Gorman, program manager with the county Department of Environmental Quality.

"We're getting a bit frustrated," Gorman said last week, more than six months after the county began trying to get Scottsdale-based W.R. Henderson Arizona Properties to clean up all the debris around the Andrada quarry.

The deactivated marble quarry, outbuildings and rock crusher are on 8 acres about a mile south of the intersection of East Sahuarita and South Wentworth roads, near Corona de Tucson.

"They're making some progress, but it's just not at the point that it needs to be, with all the time that's gone by," Gorman said. "They just need to take this more seriously and get that place cleaned up, and follow the regulations while they're doing it."

Gorman was referring to a requirement that the county be notified before a building is demolished — a regulation that she said Henderson officials apparently violated.

Lesley Lukach, a deputy county attorney who will handle the case, said the county will ask the judge to fine the company for the violation.

Lukach said Friday she's just begun work on a complaint that also probably will seek an injunction requiring Henderson to remove all remaining junk.

Doug Woolsey, Henderson's general manager, said workers knocked down parts of a steel outbuilding that were still standing after it collapsed in March due to intense heat generated by vandals who set a bonfire in the structure.

"We took what was left of the building and took it to the recycling center," Woolsey said Friday.

He said the county's latest threat to take the company to court is nothing more than the latest in a series of actions intended to get the company to abandon its effort to restart processing of marble and other materials at the quarry.

"It's beyond ludicrous — it's an abuse of power," he said.

"They just don't want us there working, and they're using news media to make us out as the bad people," he said.

"King Huckelberry has gone too far, and that Carroll guy, too," he said, referring to County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry and county Supervisor Ray Carroll.

Neither official has spoken out specifically against the Andrada quarry, but both have fought other proposed mining operations around the county that they considered a threat to scenic and/or ecologically sensitive areas.

That includes a Canadian-based company's proposal to develop a large open-pit copper mine on the eastern slopes of the Santa Rita Mountains.

Both Huckelberry and Carroll also have often stated their concern that state and federal mining laws don't require companies to adequately rehabilitate land used for mining.

Woolsey said Henderson is not a mining company. He and his partner, William R. Henderson of Rexburg, Idaho, just want to process salvageable material in the overburden — leftover crushed rock from previous mining at the site — before developing the 160-acre parcel that includes the quarry for residential use, Woolsey said.

He said the company has spent about $17,000 to clean up the quarry.

The junk that a county inspector found on the site two weeks ago included "only a few pallets and paper — there were no oil drums or gas tanks or chemical waste," Woolsey said.

He said some of the trash at the site was left by "wildcat dumpers — dirtbags who drive out and dump trash there."

He said vandals got into the property by tearing down three gates the company has had to install, then re-install, over the past several months.

Gorman said the county Environmental Quality Department issued a second notice of violation to Henderson after the Aug. 13 inspection, the latest of several visits to the site by county officials after the first notice was issued on March 13.

She said Henderson officials cleaned up some of the junk after the initial notice and first few inspections, but much of it has remained despite repeated requests to clean it up.

"They kept telling us 'We'll get it done. We'll have it all cleaned up. Just give us a little more time,' " Gorman said.

Mike Carson, a Corona de Tucson resident and environmentalist, agrees that the county has treated Henderson differently from other property owners — by waiting so long before finally taking enforcement action.

"The people I've talked with are unhappy that Henderson went 150 days without being fined," said Carson, president of the Empire-Fagan Coalition, which opposes mining at Andrada and other sites on Tucson's Southeast Side.

"I would challenge anyone to find a similar case of a residential- or commercial-property owner who wasn't prosecuted after failing to comply with a cleanup order for 150 days," he said.

"It's all part of the bigger picture of how the mining industry is held to a different standard than the rest of us."