Alabama Department of Environmental Management received many public comments opposing the proposed asphalt plant on Moyers Road and released those comments Monday. The comments are in response to Grayson Carter & Son’s application for an air permit for the plant.

The property on Moyers Road had been in the city limits of Athens until the Athens City Council voted to de-annex the over 80 acre property in December 2020.

“There are extremely strict regulations and rules that are imposed by ADEM and federal agencies. One of the things you have to get is an air permit from ADEM for that very purpose: To ensure that the facility that you’re putting up, the equipment that you’re going to use, and procedures that you’re going to have in place are strong enough to avoid the air being contaminated,” Randy Thomason, Chief Financial Officer for Grayson Carter & Son, said to The News Courier in a previous interview.

The reason the city de-annexed the property was because “they could not pull the dirt away from that site and it be in the city without a whole lot of red tape,” Council President Harold Wales explained at a special called meeting last Friday.

The special called meeting came four days after homeowners adjacent to and near the land owned by Grayson Carter & Son voiced strong opposition and disapproval of the city’s decision to de-annex the property in light of the company’s plan to build the asphalt plant. At the meeting, the council also spoke out in opposition of an issuance of an air permit, approved a Resolution explaining their opposition, and submitted the Resolution to ADEM.

The Resolution also called on Grayson Carter & Son to reconsider the asphalt plant. It Resolution states, “For reasons stated in this document, the City Council calls upon Grayson Carter & Son Contracting, Inc., a longstanding and reputable business operating within the city for years, to reconsider its current plan in light of the concerns in this Resolution, and to withdraw its application for an air permit for an asphalt plant at 18736 Moyers Road.”

ADEM also received over 20 letters of opposition from residents near the proposed site.

Kendra Dennis wrote, “It is my deepest desire that ,while we all want to see this area grow and prosper, that each party will be allowed to have a seat at the table to provide safe and smart ways for us to grow rather than just allowing local companies to dominate and exclude the needs and desires of its neighbors.”

“There are homes, farms, schools, and churches in close proximity of the proposed location. I feel Grayson Carter & Son, Inc., have little regard for the impact of their actions on our community,” Leathan Craig said.

Residents have many concerns including health, environmental, agricultural, property values, road conditions, smell, and flooding. When the Moyers Road property was in the city limits of Athens, it was zoned residential/agricultural, not industrial.

“There are numerous national studies that show these asphalt plants, while people may think they are so harmful to us, even living in close proximity to an asphalt plant, studies just do not show that there’s any adverse affects from a health stand point,” Thomason said in a prior interview.

As of Tuesday, Thomason said they had not reviewed the public comments.