This has always been our dream.
Come on. When Gwen and I were
super young and when I'd have
breaks from the fire department,
we'd take the car and come out
and do the Hill Country drive.
We just fell in love with this whole area.
This pasture had what they
called $1,000,000 view.
There's just so much history here.
And it's it's beautiful.
For more than two decades, Kevin
Baum lived in the center of crisis.
He started his career in public
service as an Austin firefighter
and rose through the ranks to acting chief.
I left the city retired young
at age 42. After retirement,
he came here to the Texas Hill Country,
one of the most peaceful and treasured parts
of the state.
So our dream was always to move
the Hill Country and kind of
live that slower paced life.
He and his wife Gwen started a small
ranch on 12 acres and moving
to the Hill Country,
you're moving away from all the
hustle and bustle of city life.
In many ways it's his own piece of paradise.
In others, he's living right in
the middle of an industrial storm.
We're listening to blasphemy.
The backup alarms on the truck,
the the beep all hours, day and night,
and we're surrounded by stone crushers.
They've literally destroyed
the tranquility of the space.
Up to 1500 new residents
are pouring into Texas every
day. Limestone and other minerals
are necessary to build everything
from houses to highways. The result?
The number of registered quarries and
rock production facilities in Texas
has multiplied nearly 20 times. Since
2012, direct correlation with
population and expansion
and and the need for natural
resources to support that growth.
Jill Shackleford converted this
land in Hayes County from a
cattle ranch to a quarry in 2011.
Here, like at a typical quarry,
workers blast several feet down
loosening rock that is then
ground into large stockpiles
before it is sold to construction
companies in Texas and beyond.
We crunched date data and found that in 2012,
there were 52 registered rock
mining operations across the state.
Now they're more than 900,
many of them controversial quarries
to the north in Williamson County,
there are 34 total,
more than any other county in the state.
And to the West and Burnet County.
They're 16 total,
more than any other Hill Country county.
In many places,
quarry operations and property
owners quietly coexist.
But in others,
it's becoming a battleground
between dream homes and a
multibillion dollar business,
A6 Month View Defenders investigation
has found the industry's growth
is outpacing oversight.
Corey face no extensive application
process other than permits for certain
things like rock crushing. Equipment.
But calculations for those permits about
the impacts of the environment are done
by the applicant and not the state.
The state also hasn't studied the impacts
of multiple quarries clustered together.
And finally, Texas has no law requiring
a quarry operator to restore the land,
allowing them to mine then walk away.
Shackleford, now an industry consultant,
encourages quarry operators to work with
neighbors for common good, communicating
your blasting schedule
if you're blasting.
Being a being a resource for
the community as far as sponsoring
school events and anything
that's going on, and
just having an open door policy with
your neighbors to approach you if
they see anything that concerns them.
But others say some operators,
including national and international
companies moving to Texas,
are taking advantage of the state's pro
business culture and lacks oversight.
There has to be balance,
state Representative Terry Wilson,
a Republican whose district includes
Burnet and Williamson counties.
Says Texas must do more to protect some
of the state's most cherished land.
What we'll be looking to do is look to
solution sets that doesn't jeopardize
the industry while providing public
safety and economic development
to our communities. Industry
leaders say they are, in fact, tightly
regulated by more than a dozen federal,
state and local government agencies.
David Perkins is president of the Texas
Aggregates and Concrete Association.
The standards that are in place that
the Texas Commission on Environmental
Quality has are intended to be protective
of human health in the environment,
and so obviously if an applicant
meets those requirements,
they're going to be.
Ensuring that those that are around
their operations are not being
adversely affected. Industry leaders
say their work is critical to the
state's long term success, a major
driver of jobs for the communities
around them and pumping nearly $5
billion to the state's economy.
But Baum says he and his neighbors are paying
this is going into our lungs
and I can almost guarantee you
we're going to see silica in it,
which is a very dangerous
and and carcinogenic.
Aerosol from quarry operations.
This is what
we breathe and there's increased
big rig traffic along Hwy 281
between Burnet and Marble Falls.
Right now there doesn't seem to be
a 50 yard line. There just seems
to be an end zone.
And over there in the end zone is
the corporations and the state.
And out here, you know,
playing around in the dust is
the rest of us who are trying
to find out, are we safe?
Bomb is now one of several residents
taking the lead on pricing lawmakers
to study what the industry is doing
to the environment, their health
and the Hill Country itself. And
they're going to keep pushing that.
Until somebody finally says stop,
it's the state's job to say stop
now. Instead of natural beauty. He
sees what he fears as a
travesty in the making.
They're not just stealing
our quality of life, Tony.
They're stealing our dreams
because everybody that lives out
here is retired or semi retired.
They worked their whole life right,
amassing enough money so that they could
build their forever home out here.
And these guys are stealing
their drink from us.
The rise in quarries is leading.
With some major clashes between the
industry and Hill Country residents,
some of whom are taking matters
into their own hands, and
what we really discovered as a citizen
group, we had really no voice.
Next we'll take you inside
some of those fines.
Welcome to Double Horn,
Texas, population 230.
As tales go, this community along
Texas 71, on the edge of the Texas Hill
Country is young, not
even a year old,
and already it's fighting for its life.
Drive past the gates and ease
into town and you'll see houses,
but no stores or even a town hall.
We incorporated
because we wanted to protect our citizens,
and that certainly is about the
health and safety of our citizens.
Kathy Sereno was elected double
horns first mayor in February.
It's also about property values and
property rights and what we really
discovered as a citizen group,
we had really no voice.
Last year, double horned residents saw a
sign along the highway about a planned
rock mining quarry that immediately
got many in the community worried.
Double Horn is already across the
highway from another large quarry,
and land owners knew the new
operation would bring more traffic
to an already dangerous highway.
The proposed quarry was sandwiched
between two residential tracts of
land that make up double horn.
It's right literally,
literally, in our backyard we have
two existing neighborhoods.
Mobilized to stop it,
only to learn they were too late.
Spicewood, crushed on part of
a larger New York company,
had already gotten necessary
permits from the Texas Commission
on Environmental Quality,
which regulates quarries across the state.
That's when double Horn residents
turn to an unusual option,
incorporating as a town
to try to put local quarry
restrictions in place.
It would give us that voice, that ability
to exert some control over the future
development and safety of the area.
We're looking to our
communities to help themselves.
State Representative Terry Wilson,
a Burnett County Republican,
proposed several bills this past
legislative session that would have added
new regulations to quarries. None passed
without the rules in place.
Without oversight in place,
they're having to do things
that isn't normal. Cory
opponents say the Texas Commission
on Environmental Quality has
done a poor job measuring the
impacts on wildlife and the land,
particularly when large groups of
quarries cluster together in one spot,
like in the Hill Country.
Industry leaders say they
are among the most regulated
business in Texas with federal,
state and local agencies.
Watching over them,
it's about about 1000 feet there. Grant
Dean has worked as a Hill
Country developer for decades.
When he learned about a planned
quarry 3000 feet from his home,
he immediately got worried it
would decrease his property
value and his quality of life.
We have corys here,
and more of them all the time that
you pass by every day. And until
you're really introduced to them,
you're not very well aware of what the
activities are behind those those walls
at the same time, Marble Falls.
City officials got worried, too.
They feared the quarry would
hurt growth of the tourist town.
The plan drew protests and Marble
Falls that included the mayor.
Everybody is doing what they can
do legally and publicly like this
to show this is just a bad fit for
for our community.
While the city Dean and other plaintiffs
also filed a lawsuit against TCQ,
they claim the agency, too,
freely approves permits for quarries.
A year and a half later, the lawsuit
is still not resolved, but
the proposed site now has a for
sale sign and neighbors hope the
company has chosen to move on. We
are not anti mining. We are by no
means looking for anybody's jobs. We just
know that there is a better way for
everyone to do business to where we can
all become better neighbors. Double
Horn hasn't been as successful.
Soon after becoming a town
and a narrow vote last fall,
the Texas Attorney General's
office sued the community, citing.
Technicality and state law,
the agency says quote this is
simply about defending the rule
of law and preventing the abuse
of power by a neighborhood.
We are law abiding, we believe
we absolutely followed the law to
incorporate and we had no intention
and putting ourselves in a position
where we would end up in litigation.
A judge has ruled in double Horn's favor.
Now the state is appealing,
mayor Serino says legal fees
which already top 15,000.
Are depleting the town's budget,
leaving officials relying on charity.
It's a financial drain on the city.
We have no revenue tax revenue yet,
so this is coming out of the pockets
of the citizens and folks that donate.
Now. Double Horn
residents must wait for an answer
about whether they will keep
their Hill Country life as it is
or be forced to make
room for a new neighbor.
The explosive growth of quarries
is not tightly regulated.
Up next, we'll show you why efforts
to rein them in have not gotten
very far at the state Capitol.
For more than a decade,
state lawmakers have flirted with
putting new regulations in place for
the state's rock mining industry.
But over the years, some of those
ideas have failed to take hold.
It's all against the backdrop
of a rising number of rock mining
quarries in the Texas Hill Country.
Take a wild
ride on the rattler, a roller
coaster at Six Flags Fiesta
Texas and San Antonio.
It is built against the red clay wall of
what used to be a rock mining for today.
Six Flags Fiesta Texas stands as an
example of what can happen after mining
on a piece of huge land is finished,
then developed into something else.
But nothing in Texas requires
restoration of quarry land.
Surprise to understand, frankly,
Texas is. #50, if you will,
in terms of managing or providing
oversight on surface mining.
This legislative session, LED in part
by State Representative Terry Wilson,
lawmakers proposed two dozen
bills to increase oversight of the
rock mining industry. In Texas,
there is very little regulation
on surface mining. The
Bills would have created an
array of new regulations,
including a more thorough
application process and routine.
Air monitoring for areas around quarries
bills also would have included a
so-called reclamation law requiring
quarry operators to take steps to
restore the land before selling
it. Multiple other states have
such laws. Texas does not.
There were hours of testimony and
questions from lawmakers on the issues,
but ultimately the dozens of
bills did not pass. When you
look at this holistically,
we should be able to place
protections. In communities
over the past 15 years,
Texas lawmakers have considered
new laws for quarries,
many of them proposed in this report
ordered by Governor Rick Perry in 2005.
It recommended many of the
same measures Wilson and other
lawmakers proposed in the 2019
legislative session 14 years later.
Critics point to another reason
they say the state has never
fully addressed the concerns
of neighboring land
owners. They say it all comes down.
Some money. According
to a KVUE defenders analysis,
the Texas aggregates and Concrete
Association gave nearly $400,000
in campaign contributions,
including 10s of thousands of
dollars to political leaders
such as Governor Greg Abbott and
Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick.
David Perkins, head of the association,
says it participates in the
state's political process,
including campaign contributions
to ensure the industry will
be heard at the Capital
One. I think that's one of
the greatest things about our
state and about our country.
Is the ability to engage and to have
dialogue and dynamics with those
who represent you and be involved
in that process. And Speaking of money,
Perkins points out that the
industry brings plenty to Texas.
The association says its members pumped
$4.8 billion to the state economy each
year and provides thousands of jobs.
The group has also consistently
impressed on the legislature
the necessity of their work for
the state's continued growth.
The roads, the sidewalks,
the homes, the churches,
the schools, the offices,
all of those structures and all of
that infrastructure has to be done.
The water infrastructure has to
be provided for for those folks,
Perkins says, if the industry is
forced into more costly regulation.
Those fees could be passed on to consumers.
But lawmakers like Wilson say Texas must
keep pushing for more quarry regulation
strike a better balance between property
owners and big business.
The path forward sparking strong emotion.
We saw that first hand when we
invited Hill Country residents
to meet with industry officials
and state regulators.
What everyone agrees should happen next.
A couple of weeks after our series,
we went back out to the Hill Country.
We wanted to give residents a chance to
ask their questions first hand to industry
officials and state regulators. At times,
frustrations reached a boiling point.
You weren't there, Sir,
and you ought to be ashamed of yourself,
because at the end of the day,
three meetings, you had no solution
set on the table whatsoever.
In a crowded meeting room,
hundreds of Hill Country residents.
To listen, to learn and to be heard.
You modeling not true.
It is true. And and you.
For those who feel the industry
is encroaching on their
property and their way of life,
state representative Terry Wilson
became their biggest ally.
There's a point where
saturation will ruin lives.
He says he is fighting for new rules
on quarries, but he warns he and
other residents have a major force
working against them.
The lobby is extremely powerful.
We've had plenty of meetings with them.
That they said at the end of the
table and they listen. They do.
They listen very, very well.
What we need is action.
Action in terms of routine air monitoring
and estate study about the impacts of
multiple quarries clustered together.
Forum participants were invited to write
their questions on note cards then posed
by discussion moderator our own Terry
Gruca. Is there anything that can
be done, even at a local level? To
many of them wondered about dust
emissions from the operations,
others about increased traffic and
damage the industry does to roads.
David Perkins, who heads the Texas
aggregates and Concrete Association,
says his industry wants people to know
the business is tightly controlled.
Do I agree that there are improvements
that can be made? Absolutely.
There are improvements and enhancements
that can be made all the time.
Representative Wilson promises
that he will keep working and
believe that when lawmakers return
to the Capitol next spring,
they will be ready to hear what he
and other Hill Country residents
have to say. I think there's
some very simple things
that. Our citizens are asking for that.
We should meet as he works
toward that goal. Wilson
and others fear the beloved Texas Hill
Country as at stake pieces of Paradise
that helped define the beauty of Texas.