Quorum Court - Special Meeting

Sorry. I called this special meeting of the Washington County Corn Court to order. Uh I want to thank everybody for being here tonight and it's very important to me that everybody be heard and get a chance to to speak. But having said that, we have an ordinance also that sets out rules. We have 15 minutes of public comment right after we adopt the agenda and do preliminary motions. But we will also have 12 minutes of public comment before we vote on any ordinance or resolution. And I hope that if people uh still want to speak after those times are up. I'm hoping my colleagues will be will make a motion to suspend the rules and allow that to happen because as like I said, it's very important to me that everyone gets to be heard. Uh so next up we have the prayer and the pledge. Uh Washington County has an ordinance that requires that we have prayer at the beginning of the meeting, but tonight we're having 30 seconds of individual silent prayer or meditation or thinking about the work ahead of us tonight, whatever you want to do. I'm going to start the 30 seconds and I when that's over, JP Dennis is going to lead us in the pledge of allegiance. Thank you. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

So, uh, since, uh, Judge Patrick Deakons is not here tonight, uh, we need we have a need to elect someone to chair this committee. Judge Dickens asked me to, I'm happy to, but, if someone else wants to, I'm also happy for that. So, I leave it up to you. Oh. Oh. Thank you. I'd like to nominate Beth Koger to chair the evening.

Okay, we have a motion that for me, Beth Koger, to chair the meeting and we have a second by JP Butch Pond. All those in favor, raise your hand. All those opposed, raise your hand. Okay. So, I'm going to be chair tonight and I appreciate that. Uh, next up is the adoption of the agenda.

Oh, thank you. I'd like to make a motion that we adopt tonight's agenda. Okay, we have a motion to adopt the agenda as it is made by JP Ekki, seconded by JP Dean. All those in favor, raise your hand. All those opposed. The agenda has been adopted. Next up, we have prelim preliminary motions. Are there are there any preliminary motions? Yeah, I'd like to make a motion that all ordinances and resolutions be read by Todd Long. Second.

Okay. We have a motion made by JP Dean, seconded by JP Lions that we read the ordinances by title only. All those in favor, raise your hand. All those opposed. Okay. So, we will do that. Uh, next up is public comment. And like I said, it's 15 minutes. And for those who are able, if you could go ahead and make a line and that if you want to speak. If you're not able, that's okay. if you need to set, but I think it would kind of move things along maybe a little smoother if we had people lining up to speak and I do want everyone to get a chance to speak. Thank you.

Good evening. Uh my name is Ashley Lester and I am speaking on behalf of myself and the Ward family whom I share residence. Uh we are about 500 feet from the proposed site. I want to thank the JPS who have physically come out to our property. Again, thank you for physically seeing the proposed site and how it's going to impact our uh our lives. Uh we do truly appreciate you taking the time to do that. Um this site is incompatible with the existing zoning and land use in our area. We live in a rural agricultural single family zoned area. Our property supports beekeeping. we uh would be highly impacted by the 247 industrial facility high-powered lighting, the dust, the constant activity. It just doesn't align with our this environment. The air quality is a serious concern. O'Brien still remains in litigation over similar issues at their Gentry plant. This uh history matters uh when you are considering whether to introduce this risk to us. We're very concerned about the heavy truck traffic increasing on our narrow rural roads. This uh the proposed highway turnout does not meet safe roadway standards for the volume and weight of these industrial trucks. This puts families and local drivers at risk. Uh the stream on the proposed site flows directly into Prairie Grove. Pollution does not stop at jurisdictional boundaries. Runoff affects the city's drainage systems, recreational areas such as Bobkid Lake, which is in less than a thousand feet from the proposed site, and most importantly, the health of our nearby residents. uh our property values uh will probably decline with this heavy industrial moves in our neighbors, my family who've invested into rural homes and farmland, we would bear the financial loss. This decision is not just about one parcel of land. It's about protecting the character, the safety, and the long-term health of our

community. So, we respectfully ask you to deny any approval of this plan. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Chair Koger and members of the court. I'm Steve Zga. Most of you all know me. I'm an attorney. I represent some of the surrounding land owners. Uh I live in Fateville, Arkansas. Uh I want to give you three numbers that I think will define this particular issue tonight. Those three numbers are 91, 530, and three. 91 is the number of labels that the Washington County Planning Office gave me as the representative of the appellants to mail out. That is 91 different owners of land in the 1/2 mile radius of this proposed project. One of those land owners is Orion. They want you to vote yes clearly. One of those land owners is the veterinary clinic that is across 62 more or less from this proposed use. That owner of that particular business said if you allow this particular CUP to go forward, he's going to have to shut down his veterinary clinic and move it from that location because he cannot treat sick and injured animals across the street from a concrete plant. But that gets to the next point. 5:30. 5:30 is the time of day on the application that was submitted to the planning office that they would earliest be starting. Well, one of the neighbors who was familiar with concrete pressed the uh owner, the O'Brien folks at the planning commission meeting and said, "You can't transport concrete in the summertime beginning at 5:30 in the morning to remote job sites and expect it not to start to set." So, at the planning commission meeting, Mr. O'Brien said, "Well, yeah, we might be forced to start as early as three." That's the third number, 3 in the morning in the

summertime. I can tell you that uh the folks in Gentry would tell you that they are starting sometimes as early as 2 in the morning. Now, I suspect that the uh the attorney for O'Brien will tell you that there's not going to be any dust. There's not going to be any noise. There's not going to be any uh bright light at night that's going to disturb the neighbors. I respectfully disagree with that as a matter of fact. And I think you can make your own judgment about that. Your fundamental question tonight is compatibility. Is this compatible? There are 80 at least farms homes or farms and homes within a half mile radius of this property. Into that environment, O'Brien proposes to introduce loud noises. They're saying it's just a conversation. I respectfully disagree. dust and bright light at night that is not already in that environment. This is the definition of incompatibility. Members of the court, while you listen to the presentations tonight, I urge you to remember the number of residents into which O'Brien proposes to drop this plant, please vote no. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, I'm Christine Keller. I live in western Washington County outside of city limits of Lincoln. I have three adult children that drive that route every morning to get to work in Fagetville. So, they'd be driving past this and I'm concerned about the traffic. That's not a good that curve is dangerous. Trucks coming in and out right when they're going to be driving by there. I just think it's a traffic concern. But I wonder why we even have zoning laws if they're not even enforced in this case. like this. It doesn't it's not compatible with the zoning. And I'm sure you've heard all the arguments, so I don't want to bore everybody with more, but I just want to register that I'm opposed to this. Thank you.

Thank you. Next.

Hi, my name is Jenny Sparkman. I live on Bobkit Lake Road with my husband Ralph. Um, we fully expected this to be our home for the rest of our lives. and my husband is a recent um lung cancer survivor and also subsequently has some COPD issues. Uh we have all this documented and from his doctors that uh we will have to sell our home if this is passed. He cannot be exposed to that kind of dust with the proximity that we are to the house. So um and actually our our next door neighbor who's a little bit older than us even um is in the very same boat. Um, you know, we're talking about literally having to uproot our lives and and move from the place that we love if this is passed. So, I would beg you not to.

Hi, thank you so much for hearing us. My name is Lindy Phillips. I've lived in Prairie Grove for the last 12 years. Um, I'm a local business owner, local farmer, a proud Prairie Grove square dance coach. If you've ever been out to see our square dance, it's something special. Um, I wanted to, um, I know y'all are so familiar with your your own, uh, rules and regs, but I just want to, uh, go back to number five, um, on the criteria for allowance of conditional uses. Uh, and just read it quickly that the establishment, maintenance, or operation of the conditional use will not be detrimental to or endanger the public health, safety, morals, comfort, or general welfare. Um my number one concern I have three children of school age and my number one concern with this is that uh it is directly two miles not even two miles upwind um from every school in Prairie Grove. We have because we're a small town all of our schools more or less share one large campus and um and it it is directly um they are directly downwind from the proposed uh concrete plant. Um, having read lots of, uh, articles and things, um, the consensus is that concrete dust can travel up to 5 miles. Uh, we get a lot of strong winds through the valley and, um, I have no doubt that our kids would be, uh, breathing silicates on the playground. And just in case y'all weren't already familiar with this, um, years ago in the early 2000s, Prairie Grove already endured one tragedy where we had four young boys um, get testicular cancer and we had an identified cancer cluster and that was from an aerial pollutant. Um, and so one of those boys lost his life. Um, it it opened lots of people to um, that opened several businesses to liability. Um, and we still have the memory of that living in our town and so we take these things really seriously and we want to protect our kids and our

quality of life and our air and our future. So, thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you. I'm Nikki Lockett 12283 Greasy Valley and Justice Ricker is my JP and I live about a mile and a half from the site and I wasn't planning on speaking tonight but I have opposed this conditional use permit since the beginning and sent the the planning board an email back before they voted for it. But when I heard attorney ZA talk about the vet clinic, I do want to that's why I wanted to talk because that will really have a domino effect to the community because as you all probably know, Prairie Grove is not the highest income community and that vet clinic has been there for a really long time and Dr. Frans has been there probably for about four years now and he has tried to keep the cost very low. they were low from the previous bet if you consider what it is rest to market and every time he has to give me a quote he's very uncomfortable giving it. So even at the lower cost than the market he's still uncomfortable given a quote and so just thinking about the domino effect if he has to relocate his vet clinic in today's market there's no way he's going to be able to keep his cost low like he he does today where he's at. So, I just want people to be aware that it's not only going to affect the people in the direct area vicinity of the concrete plant, but really have a trickle down effect to the whole community. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening. Good evening. Uh my name is Robert Nicholas Rigggins. I live at 11514 Sunrest. Uh my property had joined Dr. Friends. I I live right up the hill from the animal clinic and I I just, you know, I wasn't even going to speak because I feel like a broken record at this point. Um, but the attorney just really hit the point. Um, I'm I'm a paid at 100. I'm only 70% disabled. I shouldn't even be saying all of it, but I'm paid at 100% due to PTSD. The entire reason my family had bought a property in a rural area right outside of the city limits is is bec uh to to not have lights all night and dust and and and things going off at 0 3:00 in the morning, etc., etc. I'm not going to go into it a whole bunch more, but it is the definition of incompatibility with my family. We we will be directly or like negatively affected by this um up all nights, poor dreams, the whole the the stress that it'll cause in our family. Furthermore, my mother-in-law is uh is retiring in five months. She's selling her property in Fyville, has bought the adjoining property to ours. She's already spoke with the um construction companies about building her little tiny forever home on the property, but if this goes through, she will not be able to do that. She she has lung issues. She's getting a a treatment tomorrow, these big infusions and whatnot. Um we're going to have to sell our property, pack it all up, every bit of equity that we've been building and dreaming into this property. You know, we're going to have to take what at least a 20% cut or something perjectably. Anyways, it again is the definition of incompatibility. I really just thank you for hearing us out and voting no on this tonight. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, please.

Thank you guys for your time. Um, my name is Matt Jones. Um, lifelong resident north of Sarasaw, currently live in Prairie Grove. um and last year purchased the commercial property adjoining to the northeast of the O'Brien Readymix um property where they're wanting to put that in. It's 10.32 acres. Um wasn't aware of the plans when I when I purchased it. Um I got it for a couple reasons. One, as an investment to pass down to my kids um whenever they get of age and I'm too old to to work it. Right now I'm running a 1,800 square foot little mall and Paul grocery store, discount grocery store out of there. Um, it's had a lot of success. We've been helping a lot of families. Um, it's it's been a good good thing for us. The long-term goal of that property that I bought it for is for an auction property. Right now, I'm renting rodeo grounds and fairgrounds and whatnot to be able to hold outdoor open auctions, um, equipment auctions and whatnot. That's kind of my long-term goal. that back area right where the the creek that flows through their property runs directly through mine and it's quite larger than the adjoining um properties. How much water comes through mine. I do plan on having auctions out there. There's going to be families um probably enjoying what little water's in there at times. I don't know how that's going to affect them. Um, I know when I'm out back right now working at our store, which again is employing two to three local people, hit or miss, when I need somebody and my family. Um, I mean, all along that hillside, I hear dogs barking. I hear kids playing. It's, uh, you know, they're enjoying life. They moved out there for a reason. Um, I wouldn't uh I just want you guys to know I'm opposed to it and I do think it'll highly affect uh what I purchased that property for. And thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next, please.

Hi, Megan Post. I live um about less than three miles away from this proposed spot. I drive past it every day on my way to work. My three young teenagers at home drive past it every day to go to school. Um uh the road is incompatible with the use. Uh not only the road, you guys have heard everything uh from our community. We do not want it here. I'm pleading with you. Please deny it. Um very concerned about my child's welfare. Uh traffic is another concern. It's terrible on that road. It's a two-lane road, right? The median is two lines. There's nowhere to go. There's no shoulder. There's no shoulder. It's terrible. Very concerned about that. and also concerned that it would open up the floodgates to other incompatible uh permits that want to be put in that area. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? Oh, time. I'm sorry. Time's up. If there's anyone else who wanted to, we'd have to have a motion to suspend the rules. Okay, so moving on. Next up, we have the conditional use permit request. Item number six. So, Brian Ready makes facility high intensity CUP. Oh, should I do you want first Dr. Ada will will introduce it and go over things with us and then the applicant will have 30 minutes and then the appellant will have 30 minutes and then we'll discuss it. Thank you.

Good evening everyone. This is the same presentation that was presented before the planning board. uh O'Brien Remix um facility highintensity condition use permit was approved by the planning board on October 30th, 2025. Five members voted in favor, two members were absent. This this um proposed project is in district 13. Um an appeal was filed with the circuit clerk office on November 12, 2025 by Mrs. Sheila Phillips uh to overturn the planning board cup approval decision uh that was taken on October 30th. The appeal states the following reasons in inaccuracies in the cup application incompatibility with the neighborhood and environmental and safety concerns. Are you able to see this? Maybe you want to try it.

That's not my presentation.

Thank you. I want to daddy daddy daddy danc I don't care.

They've already spoken to you.

That's not his presentation. No. Open up.

ready. And to conclude, yeah,

what do you think? Um, yes, let's let's continue. So, this project was approved by the planning board. Five members were like voted yes. two were absent like on October 30th, 2025. This is the site map, vicinity map, and this is like the neighbor notification map. Let me get my stuff so I can read it out. Uh the CUP notification process 91 notification were mailed by the applicant to the adjacent properties on September 4, 2025. Planning staff received up to the planning board meeting on October 30th, 2025 72 emails and letter and 30 338 petition signatures in opposition to this project citing undesired loud noises uh potential health and environmental issues and incompatibility with the agricultural and residential uh surrounding. 43 emails and letter and 50 petitions signatures in support of this project citing better concrete availability for the rural areas and commercial growth. For the cup appeal notification 91 notification were mailed by the applicant to the adjacence property on November 1st, 2025 and Yes. Uh the applicant is requesting a highintensity conditional use permit to develop and operate a concrete mixing facility, O'Brien Ready Mix. The property is 7.42 acres in total with the project occupying approximately 4.5 acres. Proposed hours of operations are Monday through Fridays with work starting anywhere between 5 a.m. to 7

a.m. and ending between 2:00 p.m. to 400 p.m. depending on weather conditions and time of the year. There will be 10 full-time employees uh on staff. No customers would be visiting the facility, but but there would be four to six mixer trucks coming and going to the facility on business days. And next, yes. Site construction would include a 45 by 80 foot shop building, a 30x 40 foot office building, and a 35x 80 plant building, a gravel lot for mixer truck parking, a gravel lot for two employee parking spaces, no ADA parking provided at this time, an aggregate storage area, a semiupake chain link fence for privacy screening, a retaining wall, and a detention pond. If this cup is approved, it will need to proceed to the large scale development phase of the planning process. And this is the proposed site including the uh dust abatement plan that was submitted by the applicant. And this is here. Uh I had to show I have to show this because like it's for reference. Um this area was was like has no zoning. It's like no county zoning prior to the change of the uh um regulation by the state. So before like August 21st, 2025, if the applicant went through the proc if the applicant went through the process, he would not have been asked to submit for a conditional use permit. who would have been asked to submit for a

large scale and go through the process. The same deal that we had like on 412. Same project. It was in an area that has like no zoning and now everything in in the county is zoned as agriculture and single family residential planning conditions. Everything is highlighted in blue in blue that was approved and discussed during the planning board. Everything you see here like in green uh conditions added by the planning board during the October like 30th meeting. So that was like some of the stuff like they said like hey we can approve this if you agree to this and uh here we are. Um, and I'm going to leave all the technical questions and the legal stuff for the applicant and their team if you have any questions.

JP Messenger. Yes, sir. Oh, sorry. Yeah. Okay. So could you go back to the the first set of planning conditions this? Oh, the first. Yes, sir. Yeah. Okay. Um, so one of the concerns is the hours of operation being 5:30 to 7. Is that is that going to be a strict

Well, that's what they submitted. That's what they submitted during the conditional use permit and that's exactly what was approved by the planning board. That's exactly what's written and we're obligated as planning staff just to follow their lead and we normally discuss with them. So what do you think and this is exactly what they submitted. You as the plan you as the quorum court has the right to add conditions modify those times even in our condition. If you look at the planning condition, the last one here, um, uh, there should be one here. No, it's this one here. Yes, it's been a while. Um, says other set hours operation may be imposed by the planning board or court. So, you have the right to either change it, approve it, disapprove it, or modify it. That's up to your discretion. Okay. So, how my real question is how's this going to be enforced? I know these I know these concrete uh operations start extremely early especially on a on a big pore. So, based on this

these are like the hours of operation that will be approved if you're going to approve it as is. If they don't if they work outside those hours of operation they'll be out of compliance of the approved cup. Okay. And the result would be a fine resulting in fines and like yes. So if someone complains says like hey we have like trucks and they can't prove that they've been operating before like that that set times that would be something like we have we have to go through like notify the applicant normally and if they don't like comply legal action will be taken and like fines will be like uh imposed. Okay. And how close is the closest resident from the sources?

Uh let me go back here. I believe like I sent that question to one of the JP. He asked me about like maybe 300 300 ft or something like that. Yes. 267. Yes. Remember like when we do a GIS analysis, we do it like based on the property boundaries. We don't do it like straight. It's not it's like like when you drive you can't see it like straight about half a mile but when you drive it it's like 75 because of the terrain. So that's the same thing. Okay. Are there any restrictions on lighting spotlights?

Uh that's one of the that's one of the new condition that's being added by uh the planning board and I believe they're like number 13. Um number 13. Yes.

Okay. And one of the things that like the staff the planning staff presented to the applicant if they go through this process and this is approved they have to go to through the large scale and during the large scale process which is like all the fun happens and all the technical stuff will be like reviewed. They need to get like a permit from R dot for this access. I mean they might have an access now but it need to be approved based on the art do like specs and they have to build it and get like get that permit and that permit like takes a while. It's not something they will do like within two weeks. It might takes like few months. That's one one thing. Uh the other thing we presented them with um equivalent projects we had like in the area that happens in the city and in the adjacent area and what the AP and ADQ requirements are and we provided them with that list that you have to do this and that to be able to apply and submit and get approval. The same thing we've done with the same requirement we asked like the uh previous projects that came through. And let me say this for the record. None of our staff is they're engineers or like medical staff. So I cannot verify any of this information. I know there might be 100% accurate, they might not. We are like we abide by the state and federal laws. So if they say like this is okay and it's approved and it's not to up to anyone's standards, there is nothing we can do. We're like we're limited to what we can get approved by the state and the federal government.

Okay. And do you know the speed limit of the road in front of the What's that? The speed limit on that I think it's highway 65. I believe it's I believe it's 55 because it's a highway. It's like it's a state highway. Okay. Yeah. I was looking at this plot plan. It looks like there's a tree right by the road. That kind of concerns me a little bit. Oh, that's that's just like that's just like a plan. It could be like modified. Definitely could be modified. Yeah, they're going to have like sight distances and all of that. They're going to be have side clearance, correct, J?

Yeah, they're going to like follow all the side distances like F like Yeah. Um he will talk about all of this. That that was just like, hey, we're going to add trees because we've been asked, but yeah, definitely they have they have requirements for all of this. Okay. Yeah, I'm a little bit concerned about the speed limit, visibility, speed limit, turning lane or anything. Um

and of course, it's not just like for like R dot. We're not doing just like for AR dot like the the we're doing this because it's also like a fire fire requirement and if you read the staff report we have the fire requirement. It's supposed to be compacted to minimum of 70,000 like uh pound all weather approved by like an engineer. Uh and it has to have like a minimum of 26 like turning radius and that basically accumate for like the largest u fire trucks they have in the area. And basically if you can like have a fire truck entering like an ambulance will like fit in there. But like that's all like those numbers like we have comes from uh state requirement and federal requirement and safety fire safety and like street safety. So we're not making that up.

Okay. Just one more last question. Yes sir. So one of the biggest concerns I've heard is about dust. Yes sir. So what what is the um what measures are going to be in place to control dust?

I mean one of the things I mean they have the dust abatement. Let me go back here. That's what the dust abatement is like there. They're going to have and Jake is going to talk about this. Mr. Chavez. Uh so normally like we ask for trees to make sure like no dust like leaves the site and also like uh uh try like to um mediate some of the noise and also like they have to keep everything like wet everything like not scattering around. As I said like there is lots of requirement by the ADQ and they have to follow this. They have a checklist and once you submit for an ADQ like u permit you will be on their schedule like for uh inspection. So each year they will come to you, you don't have to ask, and to make sure like you're following and they will do a check mark and if you're like in violation, they will ask you to correct it within a certain time or like you'll be like out of compliance with the state. And I don't think anybody wants that. But we we're going to take I'm not going to say that because like we say that we take their word that like they they're running a business and they're trying to be do good to the community and they're going to be like honest to what they said. Uh and that's one of the things like that's that's what we do as a planning in case of violation. We have the other like the other routes.

Yeah. Do do you know if the ADQ has any requirements for no visible dust? Uh I honestly cannot recall because it's been a while since we wor similar but like they do have some requirement. I don't know like about like particle size if they're going to be like specific particle size but they're going to have like a checklist that says like you have to do this as a minimum. You can always go beyond. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Absolutely.

Tough crowd. JPEGs. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um yeah, I just have a couple of questions. Um I believe I read in the application um that O'Brien stated that they were in an indust that this uh plot was in an industrial area. Um, and when I went out there, I didn't see anything that seemed industrial. So, I'm curious about where that uh where that assignment of it being an industrial. Yeah, it's um I I don't know like if they meant industrial or like they are like planning to apply for an industrial just like let me clarify and like the public should know this as well and like you know this already. We only have one zone in the county agricultural single family residents.

Correct. Anything else requires a conditional use permit to I don't want to say reszone because people will get freaked out but to have the privilege of using your property for the commercial use any use that disturbs land like one acre or more requires a large scale right

let's say if this process like um went through and for some reason that business did not work and they shut down this reverts back to agriculture single family residence and that's why we do we go through the process we go through the process so nobody will go ahead like and build whatever they want without like regulations. We have conditions on it, hence the name. So that's one thing where the industrial comes from for us. Our definitions, if you read like our definitions, um one of them says like if you store material for like long time on the property and it's used for like uh industrial uses, you need to try like treat this as an industrial and our industrial like notification area is half a mile. If this was like a mom and pop shop or like a coffee shop, 300 people like from that boundary, 300 feet would have be notified and you wouldn't see like 91 people like being notified. So the reason we use the industrial because we have definitions and we had to follow them.

Okay. Yeah. I guess I misunderstood what I read because I thought the applicant stated that this was an industrial area. No, there's no nothing industrial like by default. Okay. Um and um the other question I just have is where is O'Brien Concrete located? The where's the company located? The the headquarter. I'll leave this like to them when they come to the podium. I know they're local, but I don't know exactly if they have a headquarter. I know they have like multiple places. Okay. So, you want me to ask that question? Uh yes, please. And I know like they have like another plant like somewhere in Gentry City Limit. So,

yeah, I know about that one. Okay. Thanks. Okay, JP Dennis. Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, on the towers, I call them towers. I'm sure that they're silos maybe. Pardon? Is it like the silos where Yes. So, how high are those? Are you doing silos? According to the plans, I don't see like any silos like we see like just like concrete bends. Okay. I'll let him answer us when he comes to the podium. Okay. Yeah. All right. And once again, remember this is a condition used.

That's fine. I had several. So, I'll I'll just Yeah, that's a condition use permit for now. They're trying like to use that property for commercial. All the technical stuff is coming through the large scale. So, there's lots of stuff on that plan. Might not be on that plan so far. So because the technical is coming but I will let them answer everything and like you have the right to ask them any questions. Thank you. Next up JP Washington.

Thank you Madam Chair. Uh so I have three well no actually two because one has been answered. So for the Can you describe what a semiopaque chain link fence I'm just trying to envision it uh because those things just don't Yes.

go together. I never worked for Lowe's, but that would be semiopaque. So like in the morning you can see you can see it. You can see the light but it doesn't go through. So the people from the street won't be able to see it from outside. I guess like most of the project we had and we asked them to do they either use like a cloth that is like dark cloth that they hang behind or they use the slats that goes inside the chain link so you don't see anything behind. It depends on the I guess it depends on the availability and it depends on like how much uh how much like area like if you want to make it like blue green like matches and like blend in. So yeah and rural rural area they use like the cloth because it's the cheapest most available. We've had like project close to Springdale they had to use that slats because it was required for like match the area.

Okay. Thank you for explaining that because it's definitely not what I had in in my mind. So that and that is specifically it mentions in the uh C for security and privacy but it does nothing for noise. No, it does not. It's just like for like yeah visual impact. Okay. The next question and this is extremely minor. Uh but I did note that they said that there will be 10 employees on site but for the parking there only going to be two parking spots. So where is everybody else going to

part part of those like employees will be like truck drivers correct like yeah mixer drivers so like they will have the parking mostly like in front of the office office people and the other employee there'll be like roaming coming in and out okay all right thank you next up JP Rio Stafford thank you madam chair um in this diagram here do we know what kind of trees these are uh proposed to be is that that's a going to be a question for the applicant. Okay. Evergreen. Evergreens. Evergreens. Okay. That's all year long.

Okay. Uh and then um can you remind us the history of why we had some areas in our county that had no zoning. Fun times. So yeah, I guess like I would say like heavens knows why, but it was like in our like area and what it was like in our like previous zoning uh ordinances and the reason that was established

it was close to the nodes close to like city nodes and like intersections and it was like by design to give the option to people like to start a business without going the large without going the cup uh process. Uh if you ever notice any of those project that they came in including this one, it's close to the city edge. So it was in the planning area close to the city edge thinking ahead. People like thought ahead like maybe that would be absorbed by the city so we don't have to worry about it. But some of them they did not some of them did. So that's the whole idea. It was like giving the opportunity to businesses to come in close to intersection and make the process easier on them. If it's like larger than one acre, they will have to go through the large scale regardless. And if it does not, it will be like basically I don't want to say by right, but like you don't have to go through like the CUP, but eventually you're going to have some conditions.

Okay. I learned something. Thank you. Next up, JP Lines. Thank you, Chair. Did I understand you correctly early earlier director added that that there are some regulations from the state regarding um this plant the dust and that type of thing because when I called ADQ they couldn't give me anything.

Uh yeah we I guess like um we provided this also like to the um appellent and we provided this like to the um project engineer and to the project uh attorney. So there is a list of like I don't want to say requirement as much as like this is what like they might ask you to do previous compared to other projects that I have to go and ask like physically I had to ask like multiple projects what did you do for your plan and so was like well we had to do this and we summarized the summarize this on one page and gave it to them following this link you need to apply for those like requirements and like definitely when they go through like the ADQ permitting uh which changes like frequently. They might have like extra stuff they have like to to provide. One of them is like the SW like uh storm water prevention. That's something standard for any large scale and like they have to have that approval before like they can do anything. If you ever like seen any subdivision in the cities, they normally know they will have like silt um do they call it sens?

Yeah, silt fencing like next to the drainage and like close closer like within a distance away from the street. And that's to keep everything within the project and they will have like a notice of intent and like lots of requirements and they will be inspected on it. Thank you.

Next JP Charles Dean. Thank you chair. Uh Sam, you mentioned there would be five or six trucks running in and out of there all through the day. Correct. Yes, sir. Okay. How about material trucks? They're going to have to have material. Oh, definitely. So, like it's like part like that's according to what we asked. That's part of like the whole thing. So, if they need they need material like from time to time, definitely they will have like delivery trucks. Yeah.

And that's why it's a conditionally used on large scale because like of those trucks. However, keep in mind if it was like a county road, that would have been a different discussion with that like material like weight. But since this is a state highway, it's up to the state like to decide like how much. I cannot tell them like how much like weight they were going to have to have or like the frequency. Okay. Yeah. My my biggest concern is uh the amount of traffic that will be running in and out and keep in mind to answer this as well, Jake. Yeah. Okay. All right. Thank you. Absolutely.

Okay. Anyone else? Do we have more discussion by the court for Dr. Adam? Seeing none, we're ready to move on to the next step, which will be the applicant for 30 minutes. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Ada. Absolutely. Um, you're going to do your presentation, John. So, yeah, I have no ability to recover.

I'm gonna give you this here so you can see it. Um, that's your presentation and definitely, you know, how to maneuver this. So, five I don't have to connect. Let's do this here sometimes. There you go. It's working. And this is for that one. And you can read this if you want to. I don't need this on the phone. Well, good evening. My name is John Scott. I'm a lawyer here in Fagetville and I represent my pleasure represent O'Brien Rock Company in this application. Uh, tonight we view tonight it's a ratification hearing. Uh section five of the new zoning ordinance applicable to this says where an application for conditional use is presented to the planning board and approved the planning director Dr. Ada shall present it to the quorum court for ratification. Um, we will talk more about the status of this being, you know, the the a citizen calling themselves an appeal, which we disagree that they have a right to actually be a party to the application. But I just want to start off, I want to look at every one of you. I'm looking all the way around and I appreciate your time. I want to tell you, I have looked at this in a lot of detail and I've represented these fellows, the O'Brians, and I am firmly convinced this is absolutely the type of suitable conditional use that's appropriate in

this area for this growing Western Washington County community. It's compatible on all the points. It fits with the growth of the community. There's I've heard 1,500 residential building permits out in the Prairie Grove and Lincoln area right now. Homes need concrete and they're going to get concrete and we think the best thing is is to have a local business that's going to hire people obey the laws because they have to. They're are neighbors. Have them there because if they don't, that concrete will be coming and they'll be flying in at 65 miles an hour because they're in a hurry to get back to wherever they came from 20 miles away. So I want to just say first of all it is absolutely compatible with the growth and the desirable area that we have to live in and number two it adds to the value. Look at all the economic reports. Look at the we've got it in our PowerPoint but the community in the area is the top 10 place to live in the country for 10 years running. People need a place to live and they're moving out into this community. That's just the natural growth and natural growth needs some materials. There's a there's a lumber supply place just to the west that we'll talk about that provides lumber materials. This is just there will be roofing materials coming to these homes. There'll be all sorts of products coming. But this is just one thing. And and to this last issue that came up that Dr. Adam mentioned about the non where there was not a zone. We agree right now everything is agricultural single family R1. When they bought this property it was not zoned and they got perk tests and they thought that they weren't going to have to go through the process but here they are and they've gone through it. So that's what I want to talk to you about this process and it's being proceeded under the new zoning act was enacted in August of 2025 that defines how all this is handled. All previous ordinances have

been repealed and replaced by the new act. the freedom I could forget what it's called but that's the applicable process that we're going through and under that process there is an applicant who's the Jake the engineer on behalf of O'Brien and they have to pay a fee they submit an application ultimately they provide the notices that we talked about and they engage in a wholesome pro process with the planning director his staff and I believe if I understand they even hire outside engineers to look at this and what we're only looking at right now, we're not looking at is there going to be a tree right there? Is there going to be a, you know, is the fence going to be this tall, that tall? The real issue is is a readymix business as generally proposed compatible. And so they went through this process and as he said, there were conditions requested. There was give and take. Yes, there'll be extensive ADQ regulation. They have to have an air and water permit and they have to comply and those people can show up at any time. And they have because these people have called complained about the Gentry location. They've had two inspections in the last two weeks with ADQ said somebody said we want you to inspect that Prairie Grove location. And they said there isn't one yet. They said then go inspect Gentry. It's polluting. And they came up. They said there's dust going everywhere. And they went up and you know what it was? Not dust at all. It was steam from the boiler coming out of the the plant. Steam. There was no dust. So they put up and then gone through this process in good faith and spent a lot of time a lot of effort and they've been in business for what 80 years multiple generations of O'Brien have been in the concrete business and it's not they're not a fly by night who says oh there's some houses being built out there we want to locate they know how to run the business and they do it right they have a permanent person who works on constructing the facility and they run it right they run they put it on pavement you'll find you'll hear some of these places I've seen the one over there at Joy and not joint Greg and Van

Ash. There's two of them right there right near some homes. That's just powder. I mean dust kind of looks like pig pin from Charlie Brown when they come driving out of there. But this thing there have it'll be I'm get I'm a I shouldn't have used a PowerPoint because I never do it and maybe I can get to it. But anyway, I'm so I'm just I I this is very important to us and I'm here to do the law just whatever law there is to do. There's a lot because there's a right to have this to use your property and go through this process appropriately

and there's a right to be mad as heck if the few people that are here but there's 11,000 people probably in the area of this thing and we got 35 people here not there's always going to be not in my backyard people and a thousand people signing a thing they're not here they don't they none of these people have participated in the process with Dr. Ada and Jake a licensed engineer. Excuse me just a moment. I might have to ask that the audience please don't interrupt while someone is speaking. I know when I'm speaking and I get interrupted it's hard to get my get started. Sometimes we lose besides we owe them respect and they owe us respect.

I appreciate that. It kind of distracting but so but I'm you know I understand they're they're emotional. They have a right. That's what our process is. It lets them speak. So I'm going to go to this thing because I'm going to I won't even get to it if I don't. But as just to start and this is this is sort of for visual effect but the question is what could they do without having to go get a conditional permit. I tell you what they could do and they still can do put a hog farm out there or turkey houses or chicken houses and anybody who's they put frog they put something that somebody I guarantee will smell 247 but that's not what they're doing. They this is a process. It's a it's it's a concrete plant readymixed concrete plant. We've given you some information. You can look at the PowerPoint. All sorts of publications talking about what a great place this area is to live, the growth. Our Northwest Arkansas Council CEO Nelson Peacock says, you know, you have to plan early so that housing infrastructure can meet future demand. And there is going to be demand. There's projections. We provide an article that talks about the expected growth Washington County. Next thing we've given you here, I'm still on the day show you that there's been a quite a bit of growth. And I understand that that there's people who don't really want growth. They want to be kind of in a in a certain area, but you know, we're kind of dealing with the reality that there is growth. And so part of that is this is an area that that is growing. Matter of fact, Prayer Grove was uh one of the top growths between the year 2020 and 2026 and is projected to grow even more. If we look at the next one that talks about just this is a very recent article talking about largest cities in Northwest Arkansas and the fastest growing in Northwest Arkansas. Prairie Grove is there at number five between 2010 and 2024. It grew 92%. and it's still growing and they need concrete. You know, this

is not a toxic material. I get to that, but it's it's just it's sand, it's gravel, and it's cement powder and water. And it been there's concrete on every one of us have probably concrete on our driveway and a foundation. And you just it's just a building material that that has to be used just like bricks and and uh and and roofing. And so we we'll showing you here that basically the point being with all these things is that there is growth and when you have growth you have to have the infrastructure to support it or else it's just going to be a fly by you really are going to have traffic coming in and and so this really helps these people are going to pull out and there's been issue like well how about all these trucks? Well, what typically happens is you do have five trucks. They don't all get loaded at once. They kind of come in, somebody gets loaded, and he leaves and then the next one comes. They're not there. I've seen and read articles about concrete plants that 247 there's a line of 50 trucks just waiting to be filled. This is not that kind of operation. They'll send one out. They'll send another one out. They send them about every what 30, 45 minutes. Then they kind of come back through after they finish their job. They'll come, they probably get loaded again, and they head back out. But it's sort of a one by one. And again, I know there's always concerns about traffic, but everybody driving on the roads got you got to assume that everybody's going to obey the laws. I mean, you know, trucks don't benefit from pulling out and getting t-boned or t-boning someone. They're going to they have actually I know they have a thorough safety training. It's very important driving those trucks to be safe driving them. They're, you know, they're not cheap. Um, so anyway, we have this unprecedented growth. We have the infrastructure expansion and you know there's complaints and that the allegations been made if you build a concrete plant it's going to devastate the value. I've heard them say 35% property value decline. Just don't think that empirically that's true. I think the real truth is you can't untangle the causes and effect. property values are going up and they certainly go up when

you can build houses and when people want to live in your area and you can build affordable houses when you have the the the infrastructure to do it and it will benefit raise the water for everyone. Um and so you know we talk about you know buyers are looking for growth and they want opportunities of places where they can build houses. Uh it does have a positive environment. It has a positive economic impact. You know, it's going to create some jobs, tax revenue for sure from property taxes to income that's generated and and people in the community spending money in the community. Um I see this why I don't do these things. I'm looking and so uh you know just basically you know locating a ready next concrete next to next to construction demand and cluster. That's just it just makes common sense. And again, they're not coming to try to bother anyone, but you know, there's people who are get bothered for sure. Uh I want to show you here. Um God, it's compatible. That is two O'Brien facilities. I think maybe up in Gal, Missouri, up through

Mr. Scott, I'm sorry, but I don't I'm afraid people at home can't hear when you're I don't know, but I'm

That's probably true. I'm trying to look over at the thing. But you just wanted to say that those are the the the he call them the towers a silo. And so everybody knows the real concern anybody really ever articulates is cement powder. Cement they they claim, you know, that that could be something they're worried about. It's a fine dust. It's a small portion of the concrete ready mixed but maybe 15% of a load but it's brought in in an enclosed truck. It's put directly into silos. It's not out ever in the open. Now gravel will be out in a outdoors and they keep it watered down. But the cement powder is in a silo. Mr. Pond or I mean Mr. Bleming over here, Justice Lemming, I know he's he said, "Well, you might you're going to you go out there and there might be some cement powder. Get out." But there's there is a design for how that works. They have bags they call them and filters and a lot of care is taken because they track it and they're not losing cement powder. They track it. They know how much they have, how many loads they send and they're not losing like 10 or 15%. Um and you know I've heard complaints about things two miles away and I just if we were in court and if we if this thing gets you know has to go to a court every allegation made by the residents will have to be supported by admissible evidence. Not just hearsay or folk old folks saying that you know that two two miles away kids are going to be it's going to be toxic. Um but uh that's two of their plants. That's what they look like. I better get moving here. Um you know we mentioned that there've been complaints about five different categories. We've given you we submitted it an environmental assessment done on the Gentry location. It looks at the exact areas that they're worried about here. looks at operational air quality. They did a thorough study. Emissions were not a problem. Operational sound, they put microphones out there for several days and recorded it. The sound was well, there's like 54 to 59 dB. Operational light, this is just the lumens or

candles, whatever is in it's in the report should not be and and even more there's going to be this requirement here that light not leave the property. Uh groundwater, surface water, all of that has been addressed and been found to be safe. Um it was mentioned about the what is your dust plan and this is kind of a blow up of it on that's the plan that uh the site plan that Dr. was looking at and here's a blow up of what that dust debate plan talks about some of the things but it's more strict than that because they do have to answer to ADQ not just the engineer it'll have to be very uh very well maintained uh and then so we're looking at the site that's you know what we're looking at as far as is it compatible is there any other business in the area you'll see O'Brien I should have done a better job of highlighting them but O'Brien's right there kind of in the middle across the street from County Line Liquor Lane Liquor and that It's kind of a honk tonk bar out there, I guess. But, um, if you look just to the Boston Mountain Solid Waste is right by the lake, right right on the lake. Copart salvage yard. I went out there driving around and had saw several big trucks pulling loads of cars, double-deckers pulling cars out to this auto Copart salvage park. You got to the west, you got another salvage yard, AIA, a IAA salvage yard, Forest Products Lumber yard over there. If you go to their website, they sell all sorts of lumber products. Um, and so really this corridor there is some light in industry. This is not just only rocking chairs and and uh you know children running you know through the fields. It's there there is some light industry in this kind of place. There's a propane place over there with a giant propane tank kind of advertising. So the question is is this too close to houses? That was been asked. I'm just we just have some areas of some of the other area thing other area ready mix places center look that standard materials for surrounded by neighborhoods right around all around density we got Rogers ready

mix there's baseball fields there's golf course there's house there's neighborhoods all right around it you got low look at that just full subdivisions all around it to the east and in in all directions really mix this one's got there's neighborhoods standard materials group. And as I said, there's the one over there at Greg and and Van Ashylum Springs. I've been out to that one. That one's just that one's just powder. There's no concrete pad like O'Brien will have, but it's right just there's little houses that just look right out of their backyard and see the readymix plant. So, you know, ultimately there's going to be I mentioned the ADQ and so I mentioned and again we're transparent. They have been investigated based upon complaining neighbors. Yes. five times and we've given you all the results, every one of their findings. Every time the ADQ came out, it was a surprise. No warning. They looked at the operations and they found no note. They said, "No air emissions, no water problems. You're operating in compliance. Have not been cited." And, uh, they're proud of that. And so, um, you know, in the end, I I had to ask, I filed a motion, which I don't know if anybody's ever filed a motion before the quorum court attorney may mentioned it to you. Our position number one is that this should not be heard that the appellent is a party to this application. The the the section five only says that if the planning board denies the conditional use application, then the applicant may appeal. Nowhere in there does it say if the planning board grants the conditional use, then any member of the public may come in and be and appeal it. It would really allow somebody watching this on TV to come in and appeal it. Same tonight, if you guys grant our motion, can any resident from the entire Washington County go file an appeal to

circuit court? I tell you the answer is no. the way it typically comes up and I know there've been a lot of been a lot of these appeals recent years you know the you deny an a conditional use and then the applicant the owner goes to circuit court and sometimes the citizens try to go intervene in that case they'll say we want to intervene we have something to say but they're not a party as here as they're not an applicant and they really don't have standing to appeal I'm sitting as our chairman's twitching her face up at me. But I'm telling you, I firmly and 100% believe this is the law. And if we have to go appeal it, I think that will be a major issue decided by the circuit court is does an does a a citizen become a party to a conditional use application? No. They certainly have a right in the democratic process to stand here and scream about it and tell us they don't want it. But we just asked all I can ask and I'll turn technical stuff over to Jake. I probably I had stopwatch if I forgot to turn it on. Okay, excuse me just a moment. Should Mr. Lester, should you address that what he just said or No.

Okay. Sorry. Go ahead. I mean, I agree that that tonight it needs to be heard as a ratification proceeding that's being presented for ratification and we respectfully ask that it be ratified. We think that's the right thing to do. We think that the work has been done. The county has looked at it. county planning board did not have a problem and we just really hope that we get a fair shake that that having done all that work that we get the chance to only do the next step and that's just to go to the next large scale. This just says you have a right to go to the next step not your plan has already been approved. So I'm turn it over to Jack. Thank you very much. Thank you questions. I'll be happy to

I wasn't sure about my time. How much time? He has they have 11 minutes left. There'll be questions after that. Okay.

Um, good evening. I'm Jake Chavis with Odyssey Engineering representing the O'Brien's. Just want to kind of touch on a few things that we talked about at Planning Commission or planning board. Um, so I I opened up with just, you know, planning board. I kind of want to go with this as as a discussion. Um, you know, what will it take to make everybody in this body comfortable with us moving forward? Um, and you know, we had several conversations over over a couple of different nights. Um, and we feel that we have adequately addressed uh any of the concerns that planning board had. Um, and we also feel that we address some of the concerns that the citizens of the public had as well. So, what were the concerns? You know, some of them have have been brought up tonight. Number one is traffic. Um, you know, in my professional opinion, after years of doing this, this specific site does not generate enough traffic uh to impact the state highway there. Um, and and I' I've actually submitted a letter uh with our original conditional use permit with our stamp saying that this is as a professional, this is what we believe. Um, uh, one of you mentioned earlier um, about sight triangles. Um, you know, there was concern after looking at our our site plan with all the trees that we're we're planting over there whether or not that would be safe. Um, we we we did mention a planning board that we will adhere to sight triangles on the site. So, kind of what that means is um we draw a line from where the driver will sit turning out of the driveway um a certain distance away on on each direction and that distance is variable based on the speed and nothing can be in that line of sight either way um in order for it to be safe and and we had mentioned the planning board that we will adhere to that those are the ashtto regulations triangles. Um the other concerns the planning board had were were the environmental concerns and and we've brought up a few of them

tonight and I'll just kind of walk walk through those. Um the air quality um concerns. So uh there is an environmental report that was done at at another location. Um and that report stated um that in in terms of air quality uh that that site is in within the federal regulations. Um but you know in in in doing this uh we want to go go above and beyond what was required. Um so we mentioned the planning board that we will uh uh provide a dust abate abatement plan uh to to even further keep dust settled on site. Um the next thing that they we talked about were was the noise. Um the the environmental study that was done showed um proof that we were within 54 and 59 dB. Um that is uh um about the normal conversation that that's what those decibb mean. But we went above and beyond what was asked of us. We planted or are proposing to plant evergreen trees all around the site that will help abate that noise um slightly. Um the other thing that was brought up as a concern was the light pollution. Um we we asked planning board to make this a condition of approval. Um and it was to for us to provide a phototric plan that proved uh that there will be no light bleeding over the property lines. Um and and we we we will we will do that with the large scale development. Um another concern was groundwater. Um samples were taken uh at um the other facility. No organic compounds were were detected. It's within within uh um safe safe metrics there. Um the surface water was was another um was another concern by the planning board. Um so again to go above and beyond what the county has has typically required uh of conditional use

permits uh we asked that a condition be placed upon us that we enact uh what's called water quality standards uh through our our retention pond. Um and and there is a calculation of essentially what that means is we are going to um be able to capture and treat 70% of the total suspended solids that that leave the site. And that is a condition of approval uh by that the the planning board. Um so I just just wanted to kind of um end my my talking time here with with just a statement that you know it's my job to prepare these you know hydraological analysises um storm water pollution prevention plans um you know help with the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality uh permits and construction drawings. And just want to reiterate, you know, the fact that many have touched on tonight that all of these things have to be in place and all of these things have to be in compliance with a state and federal level. Um, and and we have done that with other sites and we will do that again with this site. Um, and again, uh, the planning board will also have another opportunity to review all of this information when we submit for a large scale development. Um, and I'm here for any questions if you have any. There's time. Do they have time left?

Yeah, they always have time for questions. It's just their presentation. We have one more speaker. I didn't know if they had 5 minutes and 46 seconds. Okay. Thank you. That's what I meant. Thank you.

Good evening. Sorry. I'm Kyle O'Brien. I'm one of the owners of O'Brien Ready Mix uh fourth generation along with myself, my brother, uh my two cousins. Uh we own and operate O'Brien Ready Mix. Uh we currently employ several families uh with our organization. My two sister or my sister works for us. Uh I employ her two sons. Uh my other sister's husband works for us. Um we have several employees that have brought their children and other family members to work with us at all of our sites. Uh so uh we are family oriented. We are community oriented and so we are asking for your support to locate a radio mix plant here on the US Highway 62. We believe this location uh will better serve the growing needs of Washington County while continuing our long-standing commitment to environmental responsibility and community involvement. We already operate an environmental compliant readymix facility in Arkansas in Gentry, Arkansas, roughly 25 to 30 miles away from here. Uh we have had as been already discussed several surprise inspections. Uh we've had five or so so far. Uh and there has been no issues cited. Uh our operations uh comply fully with the regulations and we prioritize our responsibilities and practices every day. Uh for this facility on Highway 62, like Jake said, we are going above and beyond. uh we've hired him to design our facility. We also engage a separate environmental company, Triad Environmental, out of Pittsburgh, Kansas. Uh they monitor our environmentals. They make sure that we are in compliance with all our permits, uh dust control, storm water, uh all the requirements. We monitor our own stuff

and they monitor us while we monitor ours. So, we have three levels of making sure we're doing things correctly. Uh, beyond compliance, we're active in the community. We support the local schools, chambers, and organizations. Uh, this facility will create excellent paying jobs for the community. Uh, will help build the infrastructure of the growing region and will bring an economic benefit to Washington County. Again, we understand and I understand the environmental and quality of life concerns and I believe we have addressed those proactively. Uh our track record proves we operate responsibly and a residential adjacent areas without issues. So I respectfully ask for you guys to uh support us and our growth here in Arkansas. And I can either take questions or we can start with those guys and then I can come back up whichever would be. Okay. So, uh leave it up to the court. We have some who would like to ask questions, I think. So, let's start with JP

Massing. You your name was up first. Okay. Okay. Let's see. So I guess the biggest issues are around air air quality and noise. Um so we'll talk about air quality first. So what what would be sources of dust in the operation?

Uh normally at a ready mix fill facility your dust is going to be your coarse aggregate, your stone or your cement powder. Uh our coarse aggregate is uh comes from the corey washed. So it is already wet and then uh we have a sprinkler system on our aggregates uh to control dust. It also lowers the temperature of our product, makes our product better. Uh we water retention and all all that. Uh on our dust silos, our cement silos, we've got bag houses. Um those are monitored. We have pinch valves. Uh pinch valve is it's got a sensor in there. If uh the numbers are off and the tanks getting full, it automatically chokes off the supply and uh shuts the truck off so it cannot overfill the silos. Um we'll have three water points at the facility. Uh we'll have a wash out station uh when the truck returns. Uh that'll be recycled water from our retention pond. And then we'll have the water on the aggregates. And then we'll have a wash down hose for before they leave after they get loaded, they wash their truck off to make sure there's no rock, debris, dust, or anything on the truck. So when a any vehicle that comes in to our lot, their tires will be wet. So when they go from the wash out, there'll be water there. They go through the rock. So any material trucks that come in has to go through the water and then when they leave, they get washed down again.

Okay. Um, so on your aggregate, I think what you're saying is when you're handling the aggregate, either deliver it's getting delivered or it's being moved. That's when it is. It is already. Yeah, it is. It should be dustfree. It'll have moisture in it. Okay. And then as far as uh when trucks come onto the property, uh is that all concrete and pavement?

Yes, our driveway will be concrete. Uh I don't know the exact measurement as of right now, but it'll be somewhere roughly 500ish feet uh long. So that'll be concrete. And then when we build the facility, anywhere that there will be traffic will be concrete uh while we build the facility while before it is completed. Okay. I guess my question is when a when a concrete or a delivery truck comes in and they make their path through the property, it'll be all paved concrete. All p Okay, that's what I want to know if it was all paved or not.

Um Okay. And then uh oh, one other question on your silo. You said it's monitored. So your d your backous will have dust detectors on them. Is that alarmed or you say it's uh Yes, it has an alarm and it'll have a visual alarm and a sound alarm. Okay. So, I guess that alarm's in a you got a control room of some sort.

Uh the uh the alarm was actually on the tank. Uh so, if you're out there pumping into the tank, it will have a red light that will come on that gives you 30 seconds to shut your truck off uh so you don't overfill the silo. And if you do not, it will shut you off and it will It'll it won't let you fill the silo up any longer.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Um then the noise issue. Um I know there was some decibel numbers quoted and my experience with a barking dog is you know there's some noises that are extremely irritating. They're well below the decibel requirements. Uh one of those is uh you know the sound of equipment backing up. Um and you know I think that's probably not something we want to hear at 3:00 a.m. Um, so can you help me understand what what noises would be present in your operation and how can we avoid having the sound of uh trucks backing or equipment backing up? But uh

uh yes, all uh all our vehicles, all our equipment will have safety uh backup alarms on them. Uh that's they just have to uh we will uh we build with leftover concrete. We build a 6 foot x two foot x two ft bunker walls. Uh we will line our property with that as we go. Uh we will have a 8ft uh wall of our concrete blocks around and that'll keep the sound in. Uh we'll also have the tree uh barrier and then the um fencing whatever that was called. We'll have we'll have that. So we will have several measures to keep the sound in our facility.

Okay. And then the proposed hours operation are from 5:30 to 7. Is that is that what you intend to

uh more or less? Yes, sir. Uh like tomorrow, uh we're not starting uh our first jobs at 7:00, so we'll be in at 6. Uh again, it is going to be weather dependent. We will operate as a normal readym mix facility like every readym mix facility in the county and state. Uh but there will be times where we'll have to be in early if those jobs require that or in the summertime when it gets hot. Uh nobody wants to work outside when it's 110. And so if we come in early we will be done early. Uh but there will be some jobs that will require us to come in early. If we're building a new school, um we will be there before the school is there for safety reasons. So, uh our normal operating hours, uh we usually get in somewhere between 7 and 5:30. Uh but yes, there will be times where we will be in earlier.

And when you say earlier, that would be 5:30. That that depends on the job. That's why on that deal it says it'll be weather dependent and time of year dependent. Okay. All right. Yeah, I'm a little bit concerned about that about having jobs that start at 3:00 a.m. and, you know, got equipment out there backing up. I know there's at least one resident that's 300 ft from the property, so they'll I think they'll clearly hear the sound of equipment backing up. So, okay. Thank you very much. Yes, sir. Next up, Jaffy Hires.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, I have a couple of questions. Same ones that I actually asked our planning director. Um, you know, I'm curious as to where O'Brien is based. Where's the base of the

Our corporate office is in St. Paul, Kansas. That's where our uh grandfather and our fathers grew up. So, that's why we were going to move our corporate office. Uh but uh our their father was in his 80s and they would pick him up, bring him to work and so if we were to have moved the office, he would have nothing to do. And uh then he hung on for several years and uh so we just we refixed that office up. It is the oldest building in St. Paul, Kansas. I believe it's been there since 1840. Uh and so that's why our office has stayed there.

Okay. Thank you. Um, the other question that I had and I I actually went back into the planning commission um and pulled up the agenda and the planning um the application for the um conditional use approval um relating to the question I asked before and on page 18 of this it states um under number 16 compatibility of with neighbors there are not many residential neighbors. The vicinity is primarily made up of industrial businesses. Now, I've been out there. Um, and to continue this before I go any further, if you switch down to page 24 of the application, which goes past the topographical maps and let me find where I was. Um, under number 24, it says, describe how Hold on, let me find my place. Yeah, the third bullet point on that says minimal impact on residential comfort. It says given the commercial industrial nature of the surrounding area and the lack of immediate residential development, the facilities operations will not interfere with the comfort or general welfare of the public. Um, so it says in here at least twice that there are no immediate residential properties. Um, when we go further down, it says that the pro there are no hold on, where'd I find that? No encroachment on residential or sensitive issues. Thank you. There are no immediate residential properties or sensitive land uses such as schools or parks directly adjacent to the proposed site. As such, the facility will not interfere with residential enjoyment or contribute to incompatible land use conflicts. Um, so I went out and looked at the site and I sat on some neighboring very close neighboring adjacent properties. So there is quite a bit of residential development right

around there. My concern is this is the application that was given to the planning board and I feel like it's not quite honest and so I'm struggling with that. Yes. Yes. I'm sorry. What was the question? I guess my question would be why does the application say that there are no immediate neighbors and that this is primary a resident um primary and uh industrial zone because it's not. Yeah. So it's it's there are certainly some residential properties around but as as far as residential developments. So as a ci as a civil engineer um that's that's most of my job. Right. Okay. So but there are many houses there. Yes. Right there.

Certainly. Yes, you drove out there. You know, there there are some residential properties uh immediately adjacent uh to to the facility. Okay. Because this application says there are no immediate residential properties. That's what it says here on your application. Sure. That and that that may just be on me. I apologize. Um okay. Yeah, it's in there twice. And um so I had some problems with that because I went out there. I didn't see any industrial businesses. I saw some small businesses, but I didn't see something that I considered industrial. You know, this is my job. I do this all the time.

When I think residential properties, I'm thinking subdivisions. I'm thinking town homes. I'm thinking apartment complexes. Okay. I'm I'm typically not thinking, you know, uh at at least a one house per five acre, four farms that are right next to it. Yeah. Okay. Um that's really all I had. I just I was troubled by that because what I'm reading here is not what I saw. So, thank you. Next up, JP Dennis.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I apologize. I may bounce bounce around a little bit, but uh since you're there at the mic, um I want to compliment you on Gentry. I went over there and looked and it's uh it's a very good looking business. It's got, you know, the concrete boundary or blocks as you said, uh, all the way in. And, uh, you know, one thing I noticed was all every concrete truck was washed real well. And so, uh, I noticed that and I noticed you had lots of sand, lots of gravel. Uh, looked like a good operation to me. My question for you is one question is why do you wash the concrete trucks when you got to turn around and use them again Monday? Uh because if you don't uh concrete will stick to it and then uh for one, it doesn't look good. Uh two, if it's covered in concrete, it's hard to work on. Um and it doesn't fun. I mean, just like anything else, if you have a piece of farm equipment and you don't keep a clean bush hog, if you don't clean it off at the end of the day, it'll rust. It'll bind up. Uh, same principle. Very good. Very good reasoning. Uh, so after I left your place and went across the street to Jim Jim's Autos, Jim Jansen, and he has a pole barn out there. And in that pole barn is uh a lot of tractors and implements, antique trucks, antique cars. And he said, "Uh you can look at it, but please don't rub it." I said, "Well, why shouldn't I rub it?" He said, "Because if you rub it, it'll scratch the paint." And his all of his antique trucks, antique cars, all of his tractor

equipment. And it it's partly because of the construction of it. It was It's an open a pole barn open to the south south. So any dust or any prevailing wind is from the south and everything in there is covered in concrete dust. Is it concrete dust or is it lime dust off the dirt road directly across his property?

Well, I wasn't there when it blew on, but I did see pictures where there was enough con dust in the air that it looked like a fog moving in. And so, do you ever have leaks in your concrete uh silos? Because that picture indicated a definite leak. There was so much there was so much dust in there, it looked like a cloud coming in. No, there won't be a leak. Uh, our cement powder is the most expensive part in our product and so I can't afford to to have a leak or to lose.

Have you ever had a leak? Uh, no sir. On your different locations, um, you brought that up earlier on your paperwork, what's the largest boundary around your location? Otherwise, 40 acres or do you put them all on seven acres or three acres?

Galina facility, I believe, is on 4.3 acres. Uh our Joplin facility is uh roughly under eight. Uh our Shenuke facility is going to be roughly six. Our largest lot will be Front Kansas and it is probably uh 15 or 20. So, 15 15 or 20 sounds more reasonable to me because that way you can put that plant in the middle of it and contain some of the noise, contain some of the dust, and be a good neighbor. Uh, the other question, you mentioned that you have children. Are they young?

Uh, no. Uh, 22 and one's getting ready to graduate high school. Okay. So, they're they're older children. would if they had grandchildren, would you allow them to live on one of your plan uh plants in a double way? Yeah. I mean, we work in it every day. I don't I would not see a an issue in that at all.

Okay. Well, you've heard the the argument from people about uh asthma and COPD. Uh it's a real concern. I know that Mr. Jansen said his wife cannot even come outside on certain nights depending on what's going on at the concrete plant there in Gentry. And so, uh, I've I didn't develop asthma until I was an adult. And uh I used to think it was just a joke, but uh when you've got it and you can't lift your arm up because you don't have enough oxygen and you're breathing concrete dust or you've had cancer in your lungs, you know, you just don't have the capacity anymore that you used to have. And I I feel for people very much whenever I hear that they have COPD and are living that close to that to a proposed concrete plant. So one of my questions for you is this. If I were to pass a or ask the court to pass a law for an abatement where that you could have a tax break for a full year, would you be interested in taking that kind of offer and finding a larger parcel of land to buy?

I make that decision. I'll have to take it up with the other owners. You'd have to take that up with the other owners. Yes, sir. Okay. Well, u is that them sitting over there? Two of them are the other one is uh is at home.

Well, you might you might ask him. Um see what they think. I just feel like the location, you know, I'll agree that a proposed concrete is needed. You know, we all know that and it's going to be in high demand in Prairie Grove because Prairie Grove is getting ready to bust wide open on on that. So, I understand why you want to be there, but I just feel like this is the wrong location. I think you have the right to swing your arm at me anytime you want to, but you're right to swing your arm stops when it hits my nose. And that's how I feel like that these people feel is that you came out there and you know, you you have the right to come out there. you have a right to buy the land, but you do you have a right a right to hit them in the nose with concrete, dust, and and waste. And I don't I don't think you do. And so check with them real quick because right now I'll be voting no on this. And that was my other question was to ask your lawyer if he's telling us as quorum court we do not have the right to decide tonight. Yes. because that's the way I was reading your what you were saying.

No, no, no, sir. That's not No, that's not what you're saying. Or no, we don't have a right. No, that's not what I was saying. What I was saying is that the a citizen does not have it cannot be a thing where

the position is is that the the ordinance does not allow a disappointed citizen to file an appeal to quorum court from the planning division's recommendation of a of a conditional use that that they don't there is no right in the ordinance today. Now, maybe there was in previous ordinances and maybe there will be in the future, but the one that was in place as of August of 25 does not say that any concerned or disappointed citizen who wasn't a party can appeal. Now, that said, you do have jurisdiction to hear this, which I we're as a ratification proceeding

and to vote whether to ratify the recommendation. So, you're saying we do have that right to say yes or no tonight? Well, you if it's treated as a ratification proceeding

and that, you know, that's I've got to make legal arguments and looking at the ordinance, that's just it doesn't provide that. So, you know, it it's it says that if it's approved, the planning director shall present it to the quorum court. And it says who shall ratify the recommendation by ordinance. And my position would be and you know this I saw in the minutes from the last meeting the position is that the courts have said that this proceeding today is legislative. And I understand y'all were told, you know, how to when you give your opinions that that the look is going to be where did you abuse your discretion? And I contend that Dr. Adah's department should get the same deference. They've looked at all this. They looked at the real engineering drawings. They know the specific conditions. Would it be possible for us to read every condition, but you have the the memo and all this says is we have a right to go to the next step to large scale. And I would consider that they the the difference unless you find that the planning board somehow abused their discretion in in recommending the conditional use, you should ratify that decision by ordinance.

Okay. How many lawsuits do you have against you at this time? And what do you mean O'Brien's concrete plants? Gentry. Just Gentry. And that's well I mean there's one where somebody's concrete cracked or something and they mad at the person who installed it and they I mean to be fair that's in in Joplin that they were a party on a small homeowner case you know where someone says our concrete I don't even know what they said cured wrong or did something but so but not as far as the operation of the plant. Okay that's just I think something that we should know. Um,

I guess I'll take this time to say how I feel because we have to tell why we're going to vote the way we're going to vote. Pardon? We got to

Oh, they have to listen. Okay, I'll save the rest of my And I'll just say as far as I'll save my comments to later. As far as I'll just if I can as far as a lawsuit goes and as far as even the people objecting today there always there going to be people who have a different opinion and they don't want you and we understand that that somebody you know a few people have stated reasons they don't want let's say they don't they just don't want it. They didn't want that where they live. But we also have to look at the good of the county as a whole. And we're talking tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people ultimately. And so it's very difficult if any single citizen or voter gets a veto power over a business. Well, that's good of you. I feel an obligation to a little 10-year-old girl that's going to have to sleep 100 feet from this. That's who I feel sorry for. And since I have that re that since you've said I have the authority to do that to vote against it, I blank sure will respect.

Thank you. I respect that.

Excuse me just a moment. I just want to remind everybody on the court that we have certain criteria that we're supposed to consider when we're considering these and let's uh maybe keep that in mind. Um next up is JP Lines. Thank you, chair. My biggest concern is the dust, you know. Well, let me back up. I want to start somewhere else. I want to start with your application such as one of my colleagues did. I didn't catch what she did, but I think it's a little disingenuous that you put in your application, your hours of operation, and based on even what you said today, I don't believe you intend to keep to those hours of operations. Not a question, just a statement. Sorry. But my biggest concern is the dust. Based on the research I was able to do, pulling information from Rice University, uh other states like Texas, who down in Houston seems to have a huge problem with the dust and what the the ailments it's causing and uh some similar companies in Brooklyn. Your lawyer said it's non-toxic, but according to this research, that dust contains particulate matter that can cause serious health effects, including reduced lung development in children, higher rates of asthma, bronchitis, heart disease, and cancer. The most recent data compiled from a range of sources, including satellite imagery, show that in 2015 alone, particulate matter was linked to 5,200 premature deaths in Houston. So, that's my biggest concern, right? So, I'm I'm this isn't my expertise. You guys are. So, help me understand that. Help me understand what you're telling me. I think the bag systems are probably the biggest mitigator. How how that's going to work and how that's different from what I'm finding from Rice University

and what's going on in Houston. Uh when was that study uh done? Well, this says 2015. So, that's the best I can do. Sorry. It said I didn't hear you. 20 It said in it said uh showed that in 2015 alone. So,

I would um I don't I'm not a technical engineer. Uh, I'm assuming that there's been greater advances in the bag house industry. I mean, there's readym mix facilities all over the country. Uh, I would say if they was that uh, deadly, I don't see how they would be open. Uh, my father's 77 years old and this is all he's ever done. Um, you know, everybody's got a water bottle. I think it says on there it could cause cancer. Uh so if you say that there is uh health risk to that there's health risk to your bottled water drinking too much water. Uh so I don't know the technical how much is too much how much is not enough. All I know is we adhere to all the environmental restrictions that are put on us by whatever state we're operating in. And at our gentry facility in this state again we've been visited five times in three years and There has been no violations. There's been no writeups. There has been nothing but a clean bill. Uh we had our environmental study done uh at that facility. Uh I believe that was given to everybody. Uh and again, everything fell in to or below the requirements that we were supposed to have put on us by the state.

I appreciate that. Although I don't know how much cover that gives me because when I was doing this research I called AEDQ. I specifically asked them what their regulations were for ready mix plants when they go out and look at it from pollution and whatnot. They they could not give me any. They couldn't point me to a document they couldn't give me. So I have no idea what they're comparing that against when they come out and do that. And I'm sure there's something to compare against but again not not having the basis for that makes it a little hard to understand really what's being looked at. And that's not your fault. That's just kind of where I'm at, right? Um my biggest concern is the health concerns, right? Um like I said, Texas has a huge problem. Texas has a lot more from what I can tell, considerably more regulations around this type of plant than Arkansas evidently does, given I couldn't find any. Um, Texas requires a buffer zone of 440 yards from the nearest school, home, church to the plant. Um, I know your plot at its longest length is 267 yards. So, there's no way you can even get that 440 yards. And quite honestly, there's a lot of debate whether that's even enough and shouldn't be increased. I mean, that's that's my my biggest concern is just the toxivity of that dust. um is getting out uh how how good are the back plants in maintaining that and you know would would rather would like to see because there was very little and I looked I tried hard to look because I I try to base everything I do on facts and I couldn't really find a whole lot about those systems or how they worked or like here you know I mean a couple of statements they said is you need to make sure you maintain your bag systems that's all they said right so again not sure from that standpoint Um, okay. But yeah, I just I just need to

get those concerns resolved to be able to support this. And I Oh, one other thing I did, sorry, my note here. I would respectfully recommend that you go back and find the most recent ordinance with all the amendments because I'm pretty sure this body passed an amendment that addresses what your lawyer says is not in the ordinance. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, next up, Justice Mingo.

Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but you guys would um actually have an air permit u granted by the ADQ. Is that correct? Or in Arkansas, you have to produce enough uh yardage to have a air permit. We have an air permit uh in Missouri. Uh we don't our facility is not large enough and it doesn't produce enough readymade concrete at this time to have one. It's based on the volume. Yeah, based on volume. Yes, sir.

Okay. Um the other question um would you be would you entertain a um so we're talking about hours of operation. I feel like saying that the typical hours are as they're listed there are probably not enforceable in any way. Uh would you be open to entertaining a uh start time restriction of say 5:30?

Uh what would I do if uh like they talk about how many homes are getting built? That many homes brings in children, needs a new school, add on to the school. Uh what would I do if the school wants to pour during the school year and they want to start before the children show up? Okay, I think that is a no. Um, so we we will we we plan on operating like every other readym mix facility in the county uh in the state. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else on the court? Oh, I'm sorry. JP Leming.

Okay. JP Leming. Thank you, chair.

Well, we can talk about this all night. We can go on about dust. We can go on about a lot of things, but I want to thank you and your family for coming to Northwest Arkansas, coming to my area because it's very much needed in our area to keep it competitive for the growth. We're going to have probably in the neighborhood of between Prairie Grove and Lincoln in the neighborhood of 1500 homes built and things is going to get bigger, schools and all that. we talk. Oh, let's back up a little further. I work for Lacco. They own three batch plants. I was one of the guys that hauled powder that we keep talking about. That's a mess. Powder is it's like any other job or facility. If you're crazy and loose with it, you can make a mess in a hurry. Like this man said, concrete is the most expensive part of this whole process. And concrete is nothing but ground up limestone rock. It's a powder. And yes, if you get crazy, it will blow a little off. But today's times, the EPA and this business owner, like he's told you, is going to water it. You got to water. It concrete takes a lot of water. And when you buy the concrete rock don't have dust in it to begin with, it's it's pretty much straight rock. And the water in it helps them. When you put it in the trucks, you don't have to put that much more water. It helps them all the way around. And if he's going to have concrete driveways, yes, you're going to control the dust big time. And so to say the dust and and dust is a problem. And if but like you said, his dust house, his powder house. I've cleaned him powderous and they're not fun to crawl the top of them and clean all that out. But you got to do it. You got to keep it clean. That's just part of the business. and he's going to do that.

The uh a lot of the problems I have where you're at and I've spoke to you about this. The driveway you're going to have out in front of your business, there's going to be about 20,000 cars per day. We've had I had a girl 16 years old killed in front of my shop about three weeks ago. Highway 62 is a disaster for traffic. I've lived here longer than BudKid Lake's been out there. All you folks that say you need to come by and look at it. No. I've watched Bud Kid Lake be put in when I was about 10 years old. I've watched all of y'all's houses be built out there. I know what used to be out there. Used to be pretty land and horses running around. Now we got a bunch of crazy people. And I just soon put a moratorium on building period in northwest Arkansas because I'm part of it. The bypass wasn't even there. All the traffic was right by this courthouse going north. And and I can talk all about growth and change. It's here. It's coming. Your facility, they're going to do a good job. O'Brien's will. Now you're trying to put a square peg in a round hole. you're going to have heck getting there because you know there's there's you're going to have a retention pond and you got a creek right by you and I know how concrete works and I know how water works. I know how all that works. I've been involved in it for a long time. to say that to say this what Robert was saying about moving your facility. It's not a bad idea to move it because you're going to have to fight to get it there and a lot of the neighbors is concerned about dust and concerned about their livelihood and concerned about their peace. And I get it. I get it. I I say every day I don't want no more growth in my area because I got a beautiful peaceful little farm that I know it's coming and I don't want it coming. But it's coming. So, I'm just

going to have to bear with it. To say all that to say this, I I really want y'all here. And where you're trying to put it may not be the place it gets put, but I really want you in this area because we really need you. And so, we'll continue with the discussion and get further do. Thank you. Further discussion by the I'm sorry. Okay. Next up, judge. Don't don't apologize. I just now pushed a button. Okay.

Um and I'm I'm looking at this uh this sheet of paper that was handed out to me, the criteria for allowance of conditional use. And uh and I'm I'm talking to you because there there are concerns and I'm I'm going And I've been out and looked at the area. I've looked at the neighborhood. I've I've listened to the neighbors. And in this uh number four item in the criteria that the proposed use com is compatible with the surrounding area. little girl, her backyard fence borders your property where you're going to put this. I mean, that's I I really I'm I'm unsure if if that's that's really compatible. And number five, established maintenance operation of the conditional use will not be detrimental to or endanger the public health, safety, comfort, general welfare. There's been questions asked about that this evening, and we might not possibly be qualified to say one way or the other. whether this could endanger somebody's health in that in that neighborhood. The conditional use number six of would it be injurious to the use and enjoyment

of other property? Uh fella has a commercial business there. animal an animal clinic. Uh you come in there when everything's really quiet and say it's the middle of the summer and you're needing to operate earlier hours so so your concrete finishers can be through by noon where it's not going to be very good for their health. Let's say you come in there at 3 in the morning and start that stuff up, which there going to be times when that's probably necessary during the in the hot part of the summer. I if if you got dogs down there at that clinic that are not in good health anyway, they're going to be hearing all that. Not not to mention that they may not be able to speak up for themsel. Well, they they do they do a lot of howling and barking, but the dogs are not going to be enjoying it. Neither are the neighborhood. There's already a neighborhood there. People living right around that. We need we need your facility. If we're if we're going to be concerned and comply with the notion of zoning, we got to look at that. Then the establishment of the conditional use permit will not impede

the normal and orderly development improvement of the surrounding area for uses permitted in the zone. I don't I I don't I don't think this is going to be compatible with future development of single family dwellings on one acre of lots, not to mention the ones that are already there. I' I've got I I don't like doing this, but I I have to comply with what's been put before us. I' I've never voted for an or a zoning ordinance as far as the the ordinance enabling countywide zoning. Not the first time and not this last time, but it passed anyway and I got to comply with it. I've got to comply with that. And I do solemnly swear to uphold the Constitution of the State of Arkansas and the Constitution of the United States. We We've got it to do whether we like it or not. I I I I can't be uh I've got a vote in the open and I've gone through criteria that I've got concerns with and and I I pray that you find the appropriate place in in this area to put your plant. It's much needed. Thank you for being patient with me. Next up, JP Rio Stafford.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, I haven't been around on the quorum court long enough to have voted on our zoning ordinance twice in two decades, but God bless JP Pond and and I have to agree with a lot of the what has been said. Uh this feels like uh a square peg that's being put into a round hole like JP Limming said. Um, I do agree that we need more concrete plants and we probably need your concrete plant and we'd like to have business development and economic development and industrial development in Washington County. We do want that. The question has to do with whether we want that in this particular location and whether we want to create a special permit to allow that in this particular location. Um uh back in uh before the first of the year uh I went out uh around the site uh with my husband. Uh first we drove the road. So uh highway uh 62 right there. You know, one of the things we have to look at is whether there's adequate road. There's sections of Highway 62 when you go further out going toward Lincoln where uh it becomes where there's two lanes, you know, going in in one direction or the other. In this particular section, there's only one lane in each direction and it's on a curve. Um, you know, I don't know if I'd go as far to call it a blind curve, but you know, folks come pretty fast around there um around that curve. And I would say that with trucks coming out, slowmoving things, it would make me feel a lot better to uh approve a conditional use permit on a section of Highway 62 where there were there was two lanes, a passing lane, right? So there's a big

truck coming out, somebody's coming fast, they can they can move out of the way, they can move into the passing lane, and you don't have a problem. Whe as opposed to somebody having to slam their brakes on because you've only got one lane. That concerns me. The other thing that concerns me is uh some of the neighbors invited me out. The neighbors who live on the adjoining properties uh the Molina family and the Navaro family and I think some of them are here tonight. Um I walked around their properties with them uh and looked down. So this is, you know, there's a behind all these properties, there's a hilltop and it kind of kind of stair steps down the hill. And so these two folks property, it's almost like an amphitheater where this O'Brien property is down at the bottom and you can stand at the pond, the Navaro's pond, and like look down into it like you're almost, you know, touching it almost. It feels like I mean they're right there. I I tried to measure on Google Maps the distance, you know, I felt like looking from the the back wall of the Molina's house to where the proposed not the property line, but where the actual proposed, you know, actual development is going to be looked to me like about 350 ft. That's it. Um, someone passed out a map here. You know, they've got a livestock shed. They have they have cows. They've got chickens on their property. They feed them there. From the livestock shed to the development looks about according to this maps 210 ft. And um and the Navaros are about a similar distance. You know, they're from their house. Their pond is right there. Their kids are right there. I know they've got a they've got a kid who's had some

health issues. I talked to Mr. from Molina a little bit. He told me about how sick he got during COVID uh and ended up with the in the hospital with I think he said pneumonia. Uh and uh he still has like some some permanent uh health issues from that and felt like it was only through the grace of God that he he recovered and got out of the hospital and survived that and and is able to still continue to be there for his family. And so I'm concerned about these folks who are just within just a few hundred feet of where this uh where this proposed spot is. Not to mention there's a whole neighborhood back behind there um back below the the burm, you know, the dam for the lake within a quarter mile of this property. There's a whole neighborhood back there on uh Bill Campbell Road and Bobkid Lake Road. If you look at the concrete plant in Fyville over by Zero Mountain, there's like there's one concrete plant up over there. I tried to measure that. Oh, there's two. Okay. Well, I found one. I tried to measure that to where the closest home was. It seemed like that was uh it was almost a quarter mile, I think, from the one I one concrete plan I found over over to the closest subdivision. Quarter mile. Not a few hundred feet. Um, to me, I think that this doesn't fit what we have to look at in terms of of compatibility, in terms of of not being detrimental uh to the existing neighbors and the existing neighborhood and the enjoyment of their property. Um, you know, and I, you know, like I said, we need concrete plants. We need stuff like this. We're a growing area, but the problem is in this particular spot, and

I'm going to have to I'm going to have to be opposed to it. So, thank you.

Next up, JP Lemie.

Thank you. I just want to say a couple more things I forgot to say while ago. As a concrete owner, I'd hate to put regulations on when he can work because we poured the we poured the Tyson feed mill over in Westville, Oklahoma when I was helping them pour concrete and that they use slip forms. It took us seven days, 24 hours a day to do that job. And and you're asking these guys if they get a Walmart slab, you know, it's the same. Some of them jobs like that requires that once you start, you just got to continue on until you get done because you just can't quit in the middle. And so for the for him to stand here and tell you exactly that he's going to he can't do that. And and we got to give him the benefit of the doubt of that, that's a business owner. All these other concrete plants that's already operating in Northwest Arkansas is doing that. So it's not fair to them to tell them that they could only start at 7:00 and go home at 5. It's I mean, we'd love to do that, but you can't do that. And another thing, we keep talking about air quality for this gentleman on his on his uh concrete plant. I'd like for this corn court to come out where Washington County allowed a company to come out and build 24 chicken houses on a dirt road out there. And I promise you folks, them people that live out there on that county road is it's a mess. Their houses is solid white. The trees is solid white. The whole road solid white. They haul about a thousand loads of chickens in and out of that place a year. And it's a mess for them people. That's that's dust problems. That's a real problem. This facility is not going to do nothing like what our county roads, the limestone gravel's doing to them folks out there. And we need to help them. We need to chip seal that for them or we need to asphalt it because we allowed them to build them chicken houses out there in a commercial setting and it needs to be took care of. We need to take care of that as far as I'm concerned with them people out there. So

that's all I want to say. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, JP Wilson. Thank you, chair. Um, I'm assuming we've entered into the phase where we have our discussion and we're past asking questions. Um, because I didn't have questions right now. I did want to enter into the discussion. We have the applicant I mean the appellant hasn't hasn't presented yet.

Well, I don't know. I think uh if we're going to have time later, I'll hold my comments until later if that would be all right. But it sounded like we were almost I don't want to say wrapping up because we know this is a process, but uh seemed like we quit asking questions some time ago and I was ready to make my comments, but I will wait if I'm afforded the opportunity to do it later. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Anyone any more questions now? Okay. The chair with the approval of the court would like to call a 10-minute break. Um, that would put us back here at what? 8:25. 8:21. 8:21. Okay. Can we do that?

Thank you. I can make a song for me.

I'm with you. What you know? I got Five.

I don't know what Thank you. Which one is it? Well,

is Okay, we have two minutes. Do we start back? Two minutes.

I mean, they have 30 minutes. Everybody's going to want to get up and Well, you may be right. You may be right. We have had 4hour meetings. So you may be right. Two minutes. Sit down. One minute. Okay. Sit down. Everybody take your seats. Sit down.

Okay, we're at the one minute mark. Will everybody please take your seats so we can get started on time?

I hate it when they slam it so loud. Okay, almost time. Okay, 8:21. We're ready to start back. We'll start now. We'll hear the U appellant. The meeting is in order. Members of the court again, attorney for the appellants, some of the appellants. Uh, I wanted to be very brief with my comments. I wanted to talk about some things that Mr. Scott raised a couple of things that came from around the horseshoe. Uh, and because I think frankly the people who live there are much more effective at speak speaking to you than I am, I'm going to let them talk. So, uh, I wanted to address a point Justice Maskill brought up. um that deals with enforcement and fines. Um I have been through enough of these hearings with y'all, both just sitting out there and representing people to know that that's been an issue. Uh I would just point out to you that if they somehow violate the conditional use permit and a fine is the answer, it's $500 for an individual violation and $250 a day for a continuing violation. That's what your code says. I would respectfully submit to you that that is sort of the cost of doing business for an operation like this. So, that's the first legal point I want to make. The second legal point I want

to make, um, and I think that it's shouldn't be lost on y'all. This is your decision. Um, at the risk of having the four horsemen ride outside, I think Mr. Lester and I actually agreed on this point. This is your decision. The planning commission cannot bind you by their recommendation. The law is clear on this point in Arkansas. Zoning and land use decisions when they are put before the legislature are a legislative decision. Period. Full stop. the end his talking about well zas your clients don't have standing to bring the appeal and you must ratify I respectfully state to you is a misstatement of the law which comes to the next point um this is not a few naysayers it's not people who don't have an investment in this I I like the points that Justice Pawn and Justice Lemming brought out about uh you should respect people in the position of O'Brien who want to invest and bring things to the community. Mr. Scott's right. Mr. Justice Pawn's right. Justice Lemming is right. We need concrete. That doesn't mean this is the right place for this plant. Um, they can't tell you that they're only going to operate beginning at 5:30. Justice Masabiel brought that point out rather elegantly. Um, they've told you essentially that. Well,

um, is it okay to start operations at 3 in the morning, 250 ft from these folks bedroom window? Even if you take Mr. Scott's assertion that this is just a conversation, that is that is the noise this place will generate. I don't know many people who can sleep through a conversation between strangers in their bedroom at 3 in the morning. It is not compatible. There are a thousand signatures on these petitions. This is not 35 people who showed up tonight. This is 35 people who represent the thousand people who are on these signatures. This is democracy. This is representative government the way it's supposed to work. These folks busted their rear ends. Which comes to the next point. I appreciate the fact that they spent money and resources and brought it to the planning office and the planning commission. These folks who I represent, their properties, they busted their rear end. They spend their money. Their houses by and large is the largest single expense they have in their lives. Their paychecks by and large go to their mortgage payments. That's the point. Just as Dennis basically made it, their property rights matter, too. And so in terms of respect, I respect what they do. I respect that it needs to be done. They ought to respect the people they are trying to put this facility in front of. And they ought to respect you. And because I do, and because I respect my clients, I'm going to let them make the points. And I'm going to withdraw now. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Hello everyone. My name is Kimberly Fuller. Uh I own 16 acres right over that hill on Bobkid Lake. I'm Sheila Phillips. I live at 16297 Bill Campbell Road and I am the appellant against the cup. I am Ashley Hammer. I also live in Prairie Grove. I live in the Prairie Meadows community which is less than a mile as the crow flies from where this will go.

Um I have asked um Kimberly Fuller if she would to speak for me. I have had kind of a respiratory thing going and when I speak for a long time I get a little scratchy. So I've asked her if she would kind of be be my voice here today and represent all of us in the art community. And and we thought it would be appropriate for the three of us. Yeah. Yes.

We we thought it would be appropriate for the three of us to stand up here because this is not just my effort. This is all of Art's effort and there's a lot of people in the community who have provided information that is included in here. Can we go to the next slide, please? We have a technical problem. So, my new friend back there in the blue is gonna help me with this. Um, I I want to make the point that O'Brien said there's what 30 some people here tonight. There were over a hundred residents who showed up in person to protest the approval of the CUP project at the Washington County Planning Commission meetings. This is our fourth meeting and you can imagine trying to keep a community engaged to to drive to Fagville for four meetings. It's hard, but it doesn't mean they don't care. Um, at the Washington County Planning Commission meeting, we submitted 338 petition signatures in opposition in advance of that October meeting. They received 72 letters from citizens at that time. Since then, Mr. Za showed you a pile of of petitions. That was actually 1,457 voting signatures who are opposed to this plant. um residents feel that we were failed at the Washington County Planning Commission level because we did express significant opposition, but in the approval that you read, it didn't seem to be reflected there at all. So, we want you to hear tonight the reasons that we think this should not be approved. And I want to say first and foremost, I've gotten to meet some of you who have come out to the property and I want to really thank you for that. Uh it takes a lot of time out of your life to do this job and I had no idea before. So, thank you as our legislative body. Uh you are our voice and we know you want to act in the

best interest of your constituents. And I'm one voice here, but like I said, I'm not alone. Tonight, I will demonstrate why our community is opposed to the cup. And we're using scientific, peer-reviewed, and expert research and evidence, as well as photos and videos. We're not just sitting in our rocking chair drumming up stories. We have really good and valid reasons for requesting that you please deny this up under appeal. There are seven criteria, as you know, for approval of a conditional use permit. I'm going to go through these and I'm going to show you how numbers two through seven are to be denied. Uh, and we can talk about number one because I think that's not actually a green check mark, but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt right now. I'll turn it down.

So, the first one is that the applicant has provided proof that each property owner, as sat under section 5N, has been notified by return receipt mail. Here is a map. Uh, can you go to The next slide, please. After that, there we go. I'll try to remember to cue you. Um, here is a map that shows the 91 residences that were mailed notification. Um, nine families did not receive a notification. That's 10% of the ones that were sent out. And can O'Brien actually prove that all necessary families were notified as that criteria states? Don't know. But the bigger point is that there are 91 residences within a half a mile and that points to this being a residential dense area and that zoning alone means that it's incompatible with heavy industrial use. Number three criteria is that adequate utilities, roads, drainage and other public services are available and adequate or will be made so if the use is granted. This is a a map of the area. You've got it. If if you look at that little red dot right there by that lake, I don't know if you can see it right there. That is where the plant's going to go. That lake right above it is Bob Kid Lake. It is on a dangerous curve in that road. You can see the road curving around the site right there. And you can see Prairie Grove. This is 200 feet from the Prairie Grove city property line. Next slide, please. This is a a zoom in. Uh, and I thought this was important to show because the

red area is where the plant will go. That funky little yellow triangle is to depict their driveway. Um, and this shows that the Molina's family, Molina's family, could you stand up? They live 210 ft from where this plant is going to be. And the Alanis family, they live 300 feet from where this plant is going to be. And the child who just stood up, we have a a letter in your packet from their doctor who says that they could suffer harm if this plant goes in. That's the child that it's referring to. The blue dots here are residences. So, this is a zoom in. So, this shows you how close these houses are. There's not just two, there's a bunch. And and the yellow dots are light commercial surrounding it. You can kind of see the vet in the lower right corner. He's right across from it. Um there is on the far left, see them the uh guide that I have for residences. Unlike commercial, right under there is that transfer station. That is not a dump. It is a transfer station. Waste is brought there. It is covered. It is put on trucks. It was taken out. So it it is not uh emitting toxic particulate. And then the other industrial locations that they had on their map are actually west of that are in Lincoln. So, um, that wasn't even appropriate to bring up. And some other things like Coparts is not a salvage yard. Uh, it is an auction for insurance lot. Uh, so it's not really industrial either. Oh, and one thing I need to show you is

Can we go back one? My bad. See that? The creek? There's like a creek that flows. Thank you, Sheila. There's a little There's a creek that flows right there. It's going to go right under their driveway. That creek is important. We'll go to the next slide. You can see that there's water in this creek. Now, uh this flows to BudKid Creek. then to the muddy fork, then to the Illinois watershed and then near Bobkid Lake onto Tenkeller in Oklahoma. The Illinois wershed impacts Illinois River and thereby some municipal water supplies and recreation. So the environmental impact of this plant could be very wide reaching. We're not just talking about this local area anymore. We're talking about runoff going in this creek spreading far and wide. all the trucks. So, they talked about six concrete trucks turn around about one an hour. They could uh if they operate for 10 hours plus all the supply trucks, the sand and the gravel, we could be talking about 60 to 100 trucks a day going over that driveway and over this creek. And you probably know Arkansas is in an ongoing lawsuit since 2005 with Oklahoma regarding pollution. The impact we're going to discuss tonight could give Oklahoma more ammunition against Arkansas. This creek also floods near Bill Campbell Road during heavy rain. So, so ground all around this area gets saturated. And topography really matters here. If you notice, you want to talk, you want to show them this part right here? So you notice where the plant is and every line on that ma map is a 10 foot increase in elevation coming down from bobkid lake. So you're correct. It is like an amphitheater. It it backs up

around that plant location. Rain will accumulate and run down this hill across the concrete plant site and must run into the creek because it's at the bottom. And O'Brien says they'll build a detention pond to store waste water. But how effective will an detention pond be on a sloped piece of land where water and rain continually run downhill across the site and dump into that creek. So these are just a couple of pictures that uh show the slope what it looks like. It's fairly steep. We can go to the next one. These are pictures standing uh at a pond and I have a picture later of that pond. Some of you have stood on the bank of that pond and the picture on the right there that shows the Prairie Grove School 1.3 miles away. less than a mile away.

So, still thinking about that criteria three, let's talk about water. We've talked about water and rain coming down the hill, but let's actually talk about water that these guys need to run their business. Each concrete truck carries 10 cubic yards of concrete. An industry average is 40 gallons of water per yard. That's 400 gallons per load. At 60 trucks, we talked about six trucks, 10 runs a day because they come and go continuously. That math equals 24,000 gallons per day. Assuming they operate 5 days per week, that's 6,240,000 gallons of water needed per year. An industry estimate is up to,400 gallons of water is needed per day to wash out six trucks. That equates to about 364,000 gallons of waste water per year. How do you get a detention pond big enough on 4.7 acres to hold 364,000 gallons of waste water? And at at one of our Washington planning uh meetings, O'Brien said that water would be clean enough for frogs and fishes. I don't think so. And I'll show you some pictures why I don't think so. The city of Prairie Grove has said it cannot supply water to O'Brien, which means that O'Brien does not have access to water utilities. The company will be required to drill a well. That's a well that sucks up over 6 million gallons of fresh water per year. Pulling this volume of water from the aquifer will likely cause the water table to drop, which could cause local residential wells to go dry. And some neighbors wells already went dry this past summer due to drought. There's also a risk of contamination of the the neighbors wells. We talked about how that area gets saturated and anything that is on that ground is going to soak into the ground and go into the groundwater.

We have cars topography in our area which means that once it soaks into the ground it's going to spread real far and there's a lawsuit against O'Brien by residents in Gentry and contaminated wells is one of the complaints. They also claim O'Brien's use of huge volumes of water floods certain parts of the neighbor's property. We talked a bit about Highway 62, an already dangerous two-lane highway. It's the main through fair between Oklahoma and Northwest Arkansas. Sits on a curve in the road. The speed limit is 55 miles an hour and traffic moves fast. Each truck exiting the O'Brien site would have about four seconds to clear traffic. Can you play the video that Oh, I'm sorry. If you could flip, it took my slide away. Okay. So, maybe what I can do

Wait, we can't hear you if you're not in front of the microphone. I'm sorry. Okay, maybe what I can do is show you so we can count. Can you see that? It's kind of far. Is it worth doing? I can't see it. No. Okay. Well, that's a video that shows traffic and you can barely get four seconds in between if you count.

If any of you want me to send that to you, I would be happy to do that so you know that it's true. Um can we go to the next slide please? One after that. Okay. Um so in terms of adequate utilities, roads, drainage and other public services available and adequate. I think we've shown that that there is a lack of sufficient utilities water for this business. The volume of trucks is incompatible with this road and location and speed. Road damage from such heavy trucks will be borne by taxpayers. Uh further drain on limited state and county resources and the cost of wear and tear on vehicles. These two pictures are uh from Gentry uh both ends of Old Highway 59 and it shows you the some potholes um and some fill there. And um 4 seconds is not enough time for a truck weighing tens of thousands of pounds to clear oncoming traffic. Drainage of the property endangers a local watershed. So knowing that those trucks are going to go over that driveway and that that that is going to go into um the creek and on to multiple water sources. There is a uh Washington County ordinance number 1999-25 article 3 that says that they can operate no closer than 100 ft from any natural or artificial including but not limited to reservoirs, drainage systems or area. And so if you allow trucks to go over this creek continually, um it could be a violation of that ordinance as well. Number four is that the proposed use is compatible with the surrounding area.

Next slide. Uh we I think we've talked about this a little bit. They say that there weren't many residential neighbors in the vicinity is made up primarily of industrial neighbors and there are no immediate residential neighbors that would be negatively impacted. I think you've all talked about that and shown that that was not true and is misleading in the application. Um even the background synopsis section of the county cup approval on page one states the zoning is for agricultural and single family residential use with a maximum density of one residential unit per acre. So, even in the approval, the county says that it is not appropriate. They brought up the Fagatville concrete batch plants. Um, there's actually three uh in Fagatville and they were allowed to operate there. They've been there 20 to 30 years. And there's a law called primacy that means that any houses built after that plant is already there, they know that plant is there. They're aware. They can look up the potential health harms and the risks from living next to a concrete batch plant if they choose to do so. That's their choice. In this case, it's different because we are here first and we are using the land as it is intended to be used as a residential agricultural area. So, we have privacy. We have the legal right to use this land for its intended use. Number five, that the establishment, maintenance, or operation of the continual conditional use will not be detrimental to or endanger the public health, safety, morals, comfort, or general welfare. We touched on some of the health risks of living near a concrete batch plant. I want to show you that that picture in the upper right corner, that is the top

of one of their silos. That's an O'Brien silo. And you can see how black that is. So when they say there's no dust coming out, I think this picture says a thousand words. Concrete mixing facilities emit toxic particulate matter, crystalline silica, and other air pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide. According to the EPA, concrete can contain up to 25 to 70% silica, and exposure to resperable silica dust can lead to silicosis, lung cancer, and COPD, as well as asthma. Silica dust is a hund times smaller than a grain of sand and can be invisible to the naked eye. So, even if you cannot see it, the cancer council says it can cause permanent scarring to the lungs. Gentry residents claim the plant there operated for months without filters. Adeq does not enforce unless several complaints are filed. We also could not find regulations from ADQ and um I don't think they have any teeth. So if you're counting on some regulatory body to control it, I don't think that's going to happen. Um, O'Brien tells us that it's not a cement plant, but cement is a component and is forced into silos under air pressure. So those silos, when they said the trucks bring them in, the way that they bring them in because the the silos here, the trucks here, how do you get it? You blow it with forced air. So that forced air is pushing that highly toxic cement into silos and some of that comes out. These particles and airborne toxins don't respect fences or zoning lines. Concrete dust can travel up to nine miles depending on wind speed and the dust's very tiny nanop particles can particles can travel up to 36 miles. And this is general information that you can

research and that's how we found this. This is particularly dangerous of the roughly 98 homes within a half a mile. So that's your 91 plus the people who didn't get one. uh of the halfmile radius of the proposed concrete batch plant, at least 25 of those have significant pre-existing health conditions. Doctors say some residents will have to move. And there is there is a letter in the packet of information from from a doctor about that. And I want to point out, see how tall that silo is in the picture in the bottom right. The industry standard is 55 to 98 feet tall. So if you are going uphill from that, you're going to be closer to the top. And how do you plant trees around a site to abate dust coming out of the top of something 55 to 98t tall? First of all, you probably have to wait 30 years for those trees to get high enough to maybe catch some of it. And it's not just lung diseases. Other health impacts of concrete dust include cardiovascular disease, skin and eye irritation, and whole body toxicity due to heavy metal exposure. So yes, it is dust and gravel, but it does contain lead, chromium, cadmium. And there is a prevailing south wind at the proposed site which will blow the toxic dust directly onto adjacent homes in Bobk Kid Lake and directly over into the community of Prairie Grove. And we do have elderly residents and young families and children and the schools we talked about. The residents in Gentry suing O'Brien public record case 04C4-2024 have documented medical harm.

Excuse me. I just want to remind you or let you know you have three minutes left. Okay. Okay.

Well, there's some of the issues right there. Here are some of the noise is harmful. The industry standard is 80 to 100 dB. That's comparable to a motorcycle or a jackhammer. Not a conversation. And I think one of you brought up how do you keep the trucks clean? Well, when the concrete gets hard inside, they use a jackhammer. It's called chipping to get that out. Excessive noise disrupts sleep, which can cause anxiety, distress, and developmental delays. And the bowl shape of the geography is going to amplify that noise. This light, this photo uh was taken from a county road and um it's it's significantly bright. I don't know how you keep light from going over your property lines when you're letting this amount of light go.

Even plants don't thrive. So, if you look at the picture on the left, um you can see some of the trees don't have leaves, but some of those trees are dead. And that's because they don't do well with the alkaline change to the soil caused by concrete batch emissions. And that horse right there, um, that is the Atlantis horse, uh, drinking out of the pond that is right next to their home. And it does affect animals. Chickens don't grow as well. They lay fewer eggs. Cows get respiratory disease. Some of this is going to blow into Bob Kid. Um, if you could go to the next one, please. And this actually is a a video that shows the lake and there's tons of white pelicans there, but you can't see that. It's a 220 acre lake. Um, and as the dust blows into that will become alkaline and cause fish gills and algae blooms, and you have the power tonight to protect it and to protect us. Next slide, please. I think I've addressed all the items in number five, so we're going to go quick. Number six is that it will not be injurious to the use and not affect property values. Next slide. Dr. France might have to move his clinic. I think we can argue that that is a community harm. And uh in terms of economic harms, my right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins. Uh so in terms of causing harm uh American economic association found that industrial sites significantly reduced nearby property values between 11 and 35% and we have two letters in that packet from realators who say that it's going to drop 15 to 20%. Ne last next slide please that the establishment of the conditional use will not impede the normal orderly development and improvement of the surrounding area for

uses permitted in the zone. These are some of the uses. Next slide, please. Permitted in the zone, there's an apiary next nearby. Um, if this area becomes industrial, it will change the whole character of the area. Established businesses like a vet clinic will move out and businesses with inherent risks to the community like O'Brien's will have a window to move in. Sorry, that's your time unless someone second. Okay. All those in favor of giving them 10 more minutes, raise your hand. Any opposed? Raise your hand. Okay. Do you have 10 more minutes starting now? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Um, why would O'Brien try to describe this area as industrial is because it's if if it's shown to be industrial, that sets a precedent to let more businesses in. And like I said, if this becomes industrial, it'll change the whole character of this area. Next slide, please. There we go. Um, this just shows you if you stand at the bank and look across, this is what it looks like. It does not look like heavy industrial. Next slide, please. That's Bob Kidd Lake. Next slide, please. O'Brien claimed in the Washington County Planning Commission meetings they wanted to be a good neighbor. They these are some pictures of some operations that they have. Um, I think just by nature of their business and a residential area, it it's really difficult to be a good neighbor. This company has because of the lawsuit. I think that gives us some pause and they we believe they improperly washed out their trucks and what you see here is the wash out remnants of thousands of trucks. The actual wash out where they're supposed to wash it out is on a concrete pad at the back of this picture on the left. And the white lines in there are chemical residues. The pictures on the right are a job site where they dumped the extra concrete just on the ground. They're supposed to be again at a at a residential construction site. There's supposed to be a box where they put that concrete. And in November uh 2025, the Benton County Emergency Communications um said that they had to go out there because they were burning without a permit and it claimed black smoke, a bad sulfur smell, and burning pallets.

So, is this com is this a good neighbor? Next slide. You've got it. Okay. Um so, these are some pictures. These are both videos actually and and I think I will show one video here because it's really important. This light that's across approximately 20 acres that first picture on the left that you see. So the light travels quite far and it's very very bright. It almost sounds like It almost sounds like it's going. Oh, is that the light one? Okay. Can you click on the video on the right, please? There we go. That is, I believe, a blowout. This was taken on January 20th around 6 in the morning. And you can see how much is coming out of the bottom of that silo. So when O' Orion says there they they don't ever do anything. They don't have leaks. I don't know what that is, but that doesn't look good. And when the video plays, can you play it again? You can actually see it blowing onto the neighbor to the right. Next slide, please. And that's, you know, that's pretty far away because we didn't want to go on their property. Uh, so that's about 20 acres away. And you can even hear that roar that early in the morning.

And I wanted to point out too that um the person who took that video counted 10 to 12 trucks between 6 and 7:15 a.m. that morning going in and out. So our request to you as a community of Washington County constituents, we are simply asking for fairness, protection, and responsible planning. We ask that this facility be denied and forced to locate to an appropriate industrial zone, not a residential agricultural community where it could cause lasting harm to health, safety, property values, and the environment. We know there are many more suitable locations that will not cause this degree of harm. We had a community meeting where some folks came out and a couple people even said, "Oh, well, that I'll buy that property from them, you know, if they want to sell it." So, you could consider that. We want to protect our city and outlying communities from the same damage that was done in Gentry. We are not against growth and the materials it will take to achieve this and we're not against O'Brien specifically, but a concrete batch plant needs to be in an appropriate and legal location. For all the reasons in this document, we request that you deny this cup. And the last slide. So, even number one, the one about the application being filed, you know, that that the time they said 5:30 a.m. They admitted in the Washington County Planning Commission that they often start much earlier, sometimes as early as 3:00 a.m. If you know that, and that's a normal business routine, why not put that in your cup? And the other things about having no residential neighbors, you know, that's why this is now orange because I'm not sure that they actually meet that criteria. I also want to say a couple of other things based on their presentation and

and they said that they tested and everything at their sites is is good. My understanding is that sometimes when they come out to do this testing they do single source testing. They test at one specific point. O'Brien gets to pick it where they're going to test and they test in that one location. So, who knows if it's operating at full capacity or if that silo is active at the place where they test. I'm not saying that they're doing that. I'm just want you to be aware of this is what we know about how things like this are tested. And Prairie Grove does need concrete. I think we've all agreed on that. Let's just move this thing further out. Um I think I just want to say yeah I think the other point that I wanted to to bring up was uh someone had said that maybe this needs like 20 acres at a minimum. I would request as a citizen that that maybe the council should consider that for highintensity industrial uses, maybe there should be a minimum 20 acre uh requirement so that people around them are protected from their operations. Just a thought. Thank you very much for your time.

We want to say thank you for you guys. Um you guys did your due diligence. If you would step up to the microphone, please. Thank you again for your due diligence that you did in listening to all the aspects of this and spending your time coming out and looking at the location. I do really appreciate that the community appreciates that. Um and I hope hope that you hear that from your community. Thank Thank you. There's what two minutes left. There's two minutes left of this 10 minutes. No one else. So

if that's all then I'm going to bring this matter back to the court for discussion.

JPI.

Thank you Madam Chair. after listening to both sides and I wanted to wait until both um parties had the opportunity to share their side, their vantage point or their discussion, their whatever. There you go. I am not going to approve this conditional use permit for the reasons of the utilities infrastructure must be adequate to facilitate the demands of the population and obviously the Prairie Grove utilities district water district is not able to support this demand at this time. Secondly, is it compat the compatibility with the surrounding areas? Absolutely not. It's in the heart of the neighborhood. I mean, the very heart of it. And I've had people tell me that they enjoy Bob Kid Lake. They go out there to enjoy it with their families, and this would be just a detriment to that enjoyment. So, to me, it's not uh compatible with the surroundings. The operation should never harm the public health, safety, comfort, or welfare. And the current information shows that the O'Brien readymix would negatively impact the community's health. We have to be responsible and our children are the next generation and we care about them and we need to invest and protect them the best way we can. And I No business should ever ever cause any harm. Let's learn the lessons from way back when in other states that they Niagara Falls that property was purchased then it was sold to the city and they buried nuclear waste never thinking that rains would

come and those barrels would pop up. But that on during that time they built a neighborhood right on top of that property and 80% of the people in that neighborhood came down with cancers. We don't need to do that. We don't need to have anything in our neighborhoods that harm our residents. So for that reason uh E on ours and it should not detract from the use and enjoyment of the neighboring areas. Bob Kid. Hello. should not hinder orderly development or improvements nearby. The veterinarian clinic would have to move and for that reason and it would disrupt his business and I can see how. But I wanted to just go on the record that those are the reasons why I'm going to deny the conditional use with my vote. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and thank you for everybody that has come out. Thank you for the emails. Oh my gosh, the emails. I tried to respond to some of them, Madam Chairman, but it just kept on getting bounced back saying that no, that that email is not. So, for anybody to think that we didn't care, didn't respond. It was difficult for some I don't know what the issue was, but and the phone conversation, they were very good. I wasn't able to go out there, but just seeing the presentation and really considering both sides because I am very much pro business and I'm very much property rights, but this one you have to balance and do what is right and to protect the health and well-being of our citizens. So, thank you, Madam Chairman. Thank you.

Next up, we have JP Robert Dennis. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd like to move that we deny the O'Brien Ready Mix Facility CUP. And we have a motion by JP Dennis to deny the C the O'Brien CUP. And we had a second by I'm sorry. Oh, Charles M. JP Dean. Okay. Oh, okay. Okay. Right.

Okay. I'm sorry. We're on our first reading here, so it wasn't technically a motion. Oh, okay. JP Wilson, what was your question? Oh, well, it sound like we were about to vote. I wasn't aware we were done with the discussion portion of this evening. I don't think we're done with the discussion. Okay. I just I just wanted to clarify that, make sure because

I mean there's there's probably things still need to be said or or things that Okay. Go ahead. And then J um Mr. Lester said go ahead and speak and then he'll read it. Okay. But I mean that would afford me the opportunity to speak in as a part of this discussion, but I don't know if it would I just want everybody to be able to speak before we finally vote. That's all I'm saying. I agree. And if it's my turn now, if the chair recognizes me, I'll go ahead. But um well JP Dennis was How do we do about that? JP Dennis,

I can yield. I'll yield to anything else that they needed to say. Were you improper? It was an improper motion. Well, you're just a moment. Are you

just a minute? No, just a minute. Here we go. Okay. Now, JP Dennis. Okay. I'd like to suspend the rules and read it for a second time. Okay. Well, I thought I'd made the motion. It was an improper motion. JP, according to attorney Lester, it was an improper motion. Okay. I move that we I the O'Brien ready mix facility high intensity

CU put it on the first reading. Second. Okay, we have a motion by JP Lines to move it to put it on his first reading. I mean JP Dennis, I'm sorry. And I didn't know who second it. Oh, JP Ricker was second. Okay. All those in Oh, okay. Sorry. Discussion.

Discussion from the court. I'll go now, but I see three red lights. I don't want to step out of time. Um, I had a degree.

Okay. Uh, bear with me. There's a couple of things I wanted to say even quite some time ago just for the purpose of clarity in our discussions. I I I really appreciate everyone who's here tonight and both sides have done a very good job at presenting their case and I appreciate all of that. Um I'm glad that we try to look at all sides of an issue. Um, I just wanted to say that to my colleagues, and of course you can vote however you want. Uh, and and I'm not making a case right now for or against anybody, but I am saying that there much has been said about one issue that I wanted to address. Um, as as a uh justice of the peace, you you can use any rationale that you want. Most all the time I see we use rationale that's supported by these criteria and and I appreciate that. You can't argue with that. There are reasons for you to vote no for this if you choose, but there's been a lot said tonight about uh this this dust issue and I wanted to speak to it. I have some anecdotal evidence. Um I I grew up around some of this. My uh father had a construction business that did masonary restoration. It's not the same thing as concrete, but when you're putting new mortar in bricks on brick buildings, you have some of the same ingredients. And of course, we were in and out of concrete facilities all of the time, either purchasing some materials or sometimes we did concrete jobs. Um I breathed some dust in the process as a teenager and as a young adult. Uh, I didn't really breathe it on the side of the concrete facility, though. I I I breathed some of it on the job site where we did some of our own mixing. Um, thank goodness I don't think it harmed me. But I I will say that there sometimes there's some dust if you

start throwing together a bunch of materials. Um, even if it's a small operation like we sometimes had and we did use uh cement. Um, however, I wanted to say also, um, I I I I I kind of pushed back a bit on the notion that we're going to have dust covering half of Prairie Grove. And I'm not belittling anyone's concerns. Everybody has stated their case very respectfully, uh, provided some research, provided some good testimony. I appreciate all of that, but I I I try to stay away from an oh my gosh, this is going to do X, Y, or Z. Um I I really there's a lot of things I've said this in here before. A lot of times what we fear the most isn't ever really as bad as we might think. That's not me making a case for this facility. Uh that's not me speaking out against those who are against the facility either, but I I just wanted to say that um sometimes things get blown a little bit farther than they should. And what I wanted to say is even in the town I grew up, a small Arkansas town, there was a concrete production facility there. And ironically enough, it was on Highway 62. As you know, the highway goes all the way across the state. Um there was buted right up against this facility where I grew up was a Walmart uh a Pizza Hut, an appliance um facility. I forget the name of the business. They sold appliances. There was a a small growth of trees. Right on the other side of

them was residential area. Those were all I mean very close. I'm talking about I could stand by a Pizza Hut and throw a rock and hit a concrete truck. And not not just me. I mean, I was no baseball star. I didn't have an arm, but anybody could. It was that close. You could stand in Walmart's parking lot, you throw a rock and hit a concrete truck. Now, the reason I'm saying this is not just to tell good old stories, but to say uh the whole time I was there growing up and even when I was a young adult there, nobody ever said, "Oh my gosh, I don't want to go to Walmart because I don't want that concrete dust all over my car." Nobody ever said that. Nobody ever said, "I don't want to go to Pizza Hut because I'm afraid that there's going to be too much dust." I mean, these things were right there. I mean, it wasn't like they were 50 feet away from this place. It was more like some of the, you know, the Walmart parking lot was 30 feet away from where they were pulling the trucks in and out. Um, so I said all that not to go to bat for this facility, but just to say there needs to be balance in all of our deliberations. Um, is there some dust when we have a readymix plant? There is sometimes right on the site, but we've heard about how that is mitigated or supposed to be mitigated. It doesn't mean that there's dust being spewed out all over a community. It just doesn't happen. Um, and also I wanted to say that um I did some research on this. Um, of course the business I mentioned that my dad started, my brother runs it now. I called him and I said, "Are you he's still in and out of concrete facilities. I said, is there any problem where some of these are, you know, in the Jonesboro area?" I said, "Do they have problems with dust getting in any residential areas? Any complaints about that?" He said, "No." And he told me where the largest production was in that area, right on the edge of Jonesboro,

which is about the only place on that side of the state that might be vibrant as is not nearly as vibrant as we are here, but a lot of concrete being produced. Um, so I I had to do some checking on that. I read some articles also that were researched on this issue of dust uh related here. Some of them might have been the same that um JP Lions mentioned earlier. Uh I they made some good points. Uh I wanted to take all that into consideration, but I did see that the the person who wrote um the articles that I looked at was an uh environmental activist. and sometimes they run hard and loose with some information. I'll just say that in front of anybody. So, it made me wonder, okay, is this an objective report or not? Uh, so we can hear all kinds of things about dust is a problem or dust is not a problem. Uh, it certainly can be mitigated when an operation is run right. Um, but like I said from the beginning, everyone here can vote however they want. I'm just saying that if you vote no, you shouldn't do that on the allegations of dust alone because if it was that dangerous, we wouldn't have concrete plants anywhere. Um, and we've all admitted that this concrete facility, we would like it to be here somewhere. And some people have even said just not right here. Okay, I would concede that. Um, but I also know that if we have a an operation like this in Washington County, there's only two choices. It's going to be in the in the city limits somewhere. It's going to be out in the county somewhere. It's only two choices. And we can deny this here and you have every right to do that. But if they want to put it somewhere else in Washington County, we're going to hear the same argument from a lot of

other people in another part of the county. And are we going to say yes to it then in the face of the same arguments that we said no to it here tonight? I mean, I'm just wanting us to be consistent because in many people, not my words, but the words in here, a lot of people said, "We know we need concrete. We know this place is growing. We know there's more and more um uh construction going on. It's just going to happen." Well, we we can't get in the business of saying uh no, no, no to an operation and then yes when they try it the fourth time. I don't think we want to do that. I don't think any business would want to have to do that either. And I'm not even urging anybody to vote any certain way. I'm just saying there's some things that we need to think about as a body. Um, one is every allegation, every contention that's made, every claim that's made, there should be should be tempered somewhat with with uh some balance because there always is some balance to be said. That's why people have debates. But I wanted to say that and to to say that we we want to be welcoming to industry and a concrete facility, no matter where it is, is going to have neighbors in our county. So, thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Next up, JP Lions. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. Next up, Mr. Mr. Lester. Did you No, you didn't have anything. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. I'm sorry. I really want to talk. I'm gonna let you. Thank you. Thank you, M.

Thanks. Um yeah, I only asked questions earlier and I kind of saved my um reasoning for at the end like um JPI did um to give everybody a chance to um say what they needed to say and listen to all the arguments. Um and I won't talk about dust at all. Um instead, I want to talk about going through the criteria. I'm not going to read them to you. You probably know them by heart at this point. Um but um you know, as far as application, you I brought up some questions. I find some of the language problematic, but that doesn't have anything to do with why I'm voting the way I am. Um, I I went out to the properties. Um, I sat on the pond. I looked down into the fishbowl of where this um concrete plant is wanting to build. Um, I we were pulling out of the site to go back into the neighborhood. Some of the neighbors were taking me around and we had to haul out of there because there was so much traffic coming so quickly at us around that curve for me. Um, you know, we're talking about the adequate roads, utilities, drainage, the road really scares me. That curve is dangerous if you have heavy trucks coming in and all the local traffic. That is one of the reasons that I am voting to deny this. Um, also number um, four on the list um, about compatibility. And I wanted to bring this up because in the slideshow um, from O'Brien they were talking about compatibility to mean um, property taxes and infrastructure and jobs, which is great for the compatibility of the county, but we're supposed to consider the compatibility of the people that live right next door. Not does this fit into the county. Does this fit in with the neighbors? And um it absolutely doesn't um the lighting,

the noise, they're going to be above this. So if you go if you went to the property and you stood on that land, you're looking down onto it. There's no way to shield the lighting. There's no way to shield the noise. It's going to come right up. I'm thinking about these children that I saw that are going to be coming into my classroom because they haven't slept the night before because of the sounds that are coming on. and I don't want that for these families. Um, the fifth thing was about endangering the public health, safety, comfort, or general welfare. Not going to talk about dust at all. I don't know enough about dust, but I will talk about comfort. Um, and again, all of those families. Um, the business is telling us that they're not going to operate between the hours of 5:30 um to whatever time they said on their um application. They're they're letting us know in advance. they're not going to do that that it's going to start a little earlier. Um, and I understand they have to do that, but that means that this is not the location because of the families there. Six up is injurious to the use and enjoyment of the property and diminishing of property values. If you've been to the property, if you had seen, you would know this is going to be detrimental for those families that live there. These are it's a beautiful piece of property. Lovely farms 300 feet away from where this plant is going to go. it will impact their property values. Um, and I just wanted to go on record as to why I was voting the way that I am and I will be voting against this. Thank you.

Further discussion? Sorry.

Just to do a quick iteration of that. Uh I agree with Miss Hires on the establishment maintenance or operation conditional use will not be detrimental to public health, safety, morals, comfort or general welfare. Not too worried about the concrete plan affecting the morals of the county. However, and the public health is maybe maybe not, but I do believe there is a safety question and it will affect comfort and general welfare of the neighbors. And saying that I will be voting for denying of it. And since no one else is on lit up, I'd like to call the question. So before I read, I just want to say that there is a scrivener's error on line 14 of this ordinance. The date it lists as June 5th. That should have been October 30th. So before if this passes, I just want you all to know that that will be changed and corrected. Um just a a simple little date,

but we don't need to make a motion for that. Not necessarily. No. You can if you would like. Okay. We have a mo an amendment by JP Limming to change the first sentence of the first whereas clause we changed that from June 5, 2025 to October 30th, 2025. Is that correct? No. Okay. So, we need to vote vote in that. Do we need to call? There's a second. That is second. Yeah. Okay. And second by Charles Dean. Okay. Do we need We need a roll call. Correct. No. Voice vote.

Okay. All those in fa favor of the amendment made by JP Limming and seconded by JP Dean, raise your hand. Okay. All opposed. Okay. So we have the uh corrected in the first whereas clause it now will will say whereas at the October 30th 2025 meeting an ordinance denying a conditional use permit recommended for approval by the planning board of adjustments for the O'Brien readymix facility highintensity CUP project. That was the first reading. Correct. Correct.

Okay. Okay. JP Ricker, you motion. Okay, we have a motion by JP Ricker, seconded by Charles Dean to move it on to its second reading. All those in favor? Okay. Any opposed? Raise your hand. Okay.

An ordinance denying An ordinance denying a conditional use permit recommended for approval by the planning board of adjustments for the O'Brien Readymix facility highintensity CUP project. That was the second reading. I would like to, Madam Chairman, I would like to suspend the rules and read for a third and final time. Second. Okay, we have a motion by JP Dennis to suspend the rules and move to its third and final reading. And I'm not sure, was that JP Hires? I'll take it.

JP Hires made the second. Okay. Okay. All those in favor of suspending the rules and moving this ordinance on for its third and final reading, please raise your hand. All those opposed, raise your hand. Okay. Thank you. An ordinance denying a conditional use permit recommended for approval by the planning board of adjustments for the O'Brien ready mix facility highintensity CUP project. Okay, this is the time for final discussion now. Correct. No. Oh, JP Dennis.

Okay, I move that we read We're there. over there. Oh, okay. Move to I'd like to move to pass. Second. Okay, we have a motion by JP Dennis to pass this ordinance. We have a second by JP Hires. Any more discussions by by the court? Oh, JP. Oh, JP Dennis. Did you Okay, I don't see anybody. Okay. Okay. So, we're ready to call the Oh my gosh, how can I forget that? I'm so sorry. Public comment, 12 minutes, three minutes each. Oh,

yeah. Right. Public comment. Anyone? Okay. Mr. Allen, seeing no public comment, will you call the role, please? Justice Ricker. Yes. Yes. Justice Pond. Yes. Justice Wilson.

Motion.

Yes. Justice Massing. Yes. Yes. Justice Lions. Yes. Justice Eky. Yes. Yes. Justice Dean. Yes. Justice Washington. Yes. Yes. Justice Koger. Yes. Yes. Justice Dennis. Yes. Yes. Justice Hires. Yes. Yes. Justice Rio Stafford. Yes. Yes. Justice Lemming. Abstain.

The motion to deny ordinance number to deny 90B passes. Thank you. Okay. I have one question for the for attorney Lester is do we? We don't have to worry about don't have to worry about that. Okay. Okay. I have a motion. Motion. Oh, we'rejourned. Thank you everybody. Mic.