Expansion-minded concrete, aggregate and cement operators have no shortage of opponents willing to use any tactic to block permitting or zoning plans. A Texas congressman, for example, has pursued legislation severely restricting where a ready mixed plant can be built. A Philadelphia-area community group, meanwhile, claimed that a permit-seeking quarry operator would endanger a hedgerow dating to Pennsylvania founder William Penn. And in Missouri, a citizens group placed the image of an oxygen mask-fitted child on a billboard in a campaign to thwart construction of a 3 million-tpy cement plant.

Even the industry's most seasoned veterans of permitting or zoning work, however, could not have envisioned the kind of freak show that unfolded June 4 in Granby, Colo. There, rebuilding is underway at Mountain Park Concrete, whose precast and ready mixed operation (photos, page 8) was at the center of a bizzare incident involving a neighboring property's crazed owner. The incident saw a perpetual loser in legal challenges to Mountain Park's plant zoning, Marvin Heemeyer, effect an afternoon shooting and building-demolition rampage in a Komatsu D355 bulldozer. Heemeyer had fortified the vehicle with armor-encased, 4- to 6-in.-thick concrete in his muffler shop, adjacent to Mountain Park's six-acre site. A portable mixer found in the shop has led investigators to believe he gradually cast the shield using packaged dry mix.

Reports from the Grand County Sheriff's office and local media indicate that Heemeyer first plowed the dozer into the company's precast plant and separate batch plant enclosure, moving on to damage or destroy more than 10 other nearby buildings. Heemeyer randomly fired rounds from a .50 caliber rifle along the way, with state and local law enforcement agents returning fire. The rampage continued for more than an hour, ending with the perpetrator taking a gun to himself after a debris-ruptured hydraulic fuel line stalled his vehicle.

The incident's only casualty, Heemeyer was apparently embittered by a hapless, four-year legal battle challenging the Town of Granby's zoning provisions that cleared the way for Mountain Park's spring 2002 construction of a retaining wall panel and related precast shop, plus ready mixed plant with 20-truck fleet. Denver Post staff quoted city officials as noting that “virtually all the buildings had some connection to town officials involved in the concrete plant dispute.”

Mountain Park owners Cody and Suzie Docheff, who run the company with their son Joe, are withholding comment on the incident pending a sheriff's investigation of events leading up to the rampage. The company's seasonal satellite plant in Fraser Valley, Colo., has provided limited backup for ready mixed orders around Granby, a mountain town about 50 miles northwest of Denver. By the time of this printing, we hope the Docheffs will be at or near full capacity. That would make for an encouraging ending to a sordid story whose tragedy is primarily one of property damage, terrorized citizens and endangered law enforcement officials.

The less drastic instances of new-plant opposition mentioned above also have the makings of happy endings: Texas Rep. John Culberson has found no success in trying to use his position as a national-law maker to subvert state and local governments' role in permitting ready mixed plants. Pennsylvania's Silvi Group is well into production at the Plumstead Quarry. Permitting was augmented when the company countered the William Penn (1644-1718) legacy claim by proving that the largest tree in the quarry-bordering hedgerow was no more than 60 years old. Finally, after more than four years of permitting work in the face of such tactics as the “endangered child” billboard, Holcim (US) Inc. announced June 8 it had obtained a Missouri DNR air permit for its St. Genevieve plant.

Opponents of construction materials plant building take note: Abuse of power, misinformation and outrageous innuendoes can rupture an argument much like the debris that halted Marvin Heemeyer in his bulldozer.

e-mail: dmarsh@primediabusiness.com