Rogers Group Experts in Crushed Stone, Aggregates, Gravel, Asphalt Paving, Road Construction, Quarries for 100 Years

Stone Company Provides Residents with Water Hook-Ups

by Steve Hinnefeld
Bloomington H-T staff writer
December 24, 2001

A dozen families and residents of western Monroe County got an early Christmas present this year.

Their homes were hooked onto Van Buren Water Corporation lines courtesy of Rogers Group, which operates a limestone quarry in their neighborhood.

The gift-giving followed a taking-away. The residents, who live on Oard Road and Vernal Pike near Rogers' Bloomington Crushed Stone quarry, had their wells run dry in September. They blamed heavy blasting at the quarry on Sept. 11, the same day as the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.

Rogers officials didn't admit to causing the water table in the area to drop by about 20 feet, but they agreed to do something about it.

"We chose to focus our resources on helping our neighbors with a good long-term solution before winter sets in, because determining what cause the water table to change make take some time and analysis," said quarry superintendent Jefre McGee.

He said quarry officials stayed in regular contact while the problems were solved. "This has been a great opportunity to work together with our neighbors and resolve this to everyone's benefit," he said.

Rogers Group first installed 500-gallon plastic water tanks for residences that had lost their well water. But cold weather would have eventually caused those water supplies to freeze.

So the company hired Bynum Fango Associates, a Bloomington engineering firm, to connect the homes to a public water system. It installed 9,000 feet of water mains along Oard Road and Vernal Pike and another 7,000 feet of line to connect the mains to the houses.

Van Buren Water Corporation is a rural water facility that serves areas in western Monroe County. It buys its water from the city of Bloomington utilities department.

Sara Fischer, whose family was one of those that lost water in September, said connecting the homes to Van Buren water was a good solution.

Some neighbors were concerned about having to start paying monthly water bills, she said. But that concern was outweighed by the convenience and reliability of city water, she said - especially for those who live near the Neal's landfill PCB site.

Fischer praised Bynum Fango and its project superintendent, Mike Farmer, for working hard to install the water lines before the onset of cold weather.

Farmer said mild fall weather helped with the project, which was finished by mid-November.

"We kind of got lucky, but we worked from morning to dark every day and Saturdays, and we put extra crews on it," he said.

Neighbors said their wells had been running low this summer, but they dropped sharply within days after September 11, when they heard three loud blasts from the quarry in the evening.

The quarry uses explosives to dislodge rock. It employs 50 people and produces crushed stone for construction and ground stone for agricultural and industrial products.

Officials from the quarry, the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, and the Indiana Geological Survey continue to investigate what caused the wells to go dry. Mark Basch, a geologist with the DNR water rights section, said the agency held Rogers Group responsible because it pumps significant quantities of ground water in its quarrying operation.

"It's our belief that that resulted in the well failures we've looked at," Basch said.

As for the temporary water storage tanks, Rogers Group has arranged to donate several of them to the Monroe County Emergency Management Department, said Deb McCarver, a spokeswoman for the company.