Monica Yant Kinney: Combating the quarry

The way Hubert Brewster reads

Highway Materials Inc. v. Hubert J. and Barbara L. Brewster

, a Montgomery County quarry wants a judge to force him off his property so a big business can get bigger.

Naturally, the quarry folks have a different interpretation.

The Brewsters wouldn't actually have to vacate their 10-acre spread while blasters blow up rock around them, Highway Materials' lawyer insists. The couple could lock themselves inside with the windows closed, so as not to get pulverized, fall off a cliff or choke on the dust.

"Is there some inconvenience? Of course there is," admits quarry attorney Steve Harris. "But it's an inconvenience to both sides."

The Brewster case caught my eye given the national discussion about eminent domain and the dwindling rights of property owners.

Seizing a home to build a school or widen a road, I get. Telling a retiree he can't play horseshoes on his property because it interferes with private enterprise, I don't.

Neither does Brewster's lawyer, Christopher Mullaney.

"If Mr. Brewster wants to sit at his picnic table and read a book, he can," Mullaney says. "If the quarry is concerned for his safety, obviously they're blasting too close."

The case of close encounters of the explosive kind takes place in Marlborough Township, where Highway Materials owns a 90-acre quarry dating to 1916.

The Brewsters have lived next door since 1985, but the land next to them was not part of the quarry at the time. They enjoyed their solitude thanks to a protective buffer of pine trees required by the DEP. The grandchildren rode horses out back, the wife hung the laundry out to dry. Visitors had no clue that mining for road stone was going on across the valley.

"It was," Brewster, 65, reminisced, "total peace and quiet."

All that changed in February, when Highway Materials, which now owned the quarry and adjacent property, tore down the trees to expand its operation.

"You can't just say 'I'm going to mine here today, tomorrow there,' " Harris says. "You have to have a plan, and the plan has always been to mine behind Brewster's property to get at the remaining reserves."

Overnight, tranquillity was replaced by noise and grime. When I visited recently, the view from the horse pen was of dirt, rock and heavy machinery.

Now, instead of relaxing on his patio, Brewster spends his days reading legal briefings and obsessing about numbers.

State environmental regulations allow Highway Materials to blast within 25 feet of Brewster's property, though Brewster contends the quarry should be subject to a more stringent 100-foot township rule.

To test his theory, Brewster stationed himself on his property line during an April 10 blast witnessed by DEP officials and local police.

No one was hurt, but afterward, DEP issued a temporary order requiring blasters to stay 1,000 feet away from the property line.

"Mr. Brewster's safety," said DEP spokeswoman Lynda Rebarchak, "was our main concern."

Oddly, both sides are suspicious of the DEP decision. And both sides agree the solution may lie in Highway Materials buying Brewster's land.

But informal efforts to rezone the area have twice been rebuffed, even after the quarry kindly donated asphalt to the township and offered $200,000 in cold cash.

The quarry won't buy without the zoning. Brewster wants to sell now, not later. He seeks $1.8 million, more than Highway Materials wants to pay.

"I'm 65, I probably have 10 years left," he says, explaining that most of his relatives died in their 70s. "I don't want to spend a minute of the time I have left waiting."

Instead, he's spending it fighting.

The dispute has already cost Brewster $15,000 in legal fees before the first hearing has been held.

In the meantime, he worries about his horses wandering from their pen and falling into the abyss.

"If they get too close to that edge," he says, "they're dead."