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Milton Town Board to determine fate of gravel pit

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TOWN OF MILTON — Residents with a stake in the future of a proposed gravel pit on North Klug Road won’t want to miss the Milton Town Board meeting Monday night.

The board could take action Monday on a recommendation that could come from the town’s planning and zoning committee on conditional-use permit for a 138-acre gravel pit proposed by Elkhorn company BR Amon & Sons and landowner Scott Traynor.

The town for weeks has been moving toward a decision on the pit despite opposition by a neighbors group of Klug Road residents who oppose the gravel pit and are threatening legal action if the town approves a conditional-use permit for it.

The group cites concerns over its potential impact on adjacent wetlands and property values, among other issues. Some of the neighbors live just a few hundred feet from areas where Amon & Sons plans to dig gravel, and operations would be on a ridge that borders a state wetland and wildlife area that the town lists as “sensitive” in its comprehensive land use plan.

The proposed pit has been hotly debated since early this year when Amon & Sons first submitted a conditional-use permit to the Milton Town Board. The board threw it out in February because of a zoning restriction.

But the board later eliminated a wetland designation from the land in question at landowner Scott Traynor’s request. That opened the door for Amon & Sons this spring to re-submit an application for the gravel pit.

Traynor owns a farm trust that is listed as co-applicant for the proposed gravel pit. Traynor and John Traynor, who is a town board member and also member of the Traynor trust, have declined to be interviewed by The Gazette.

John Traynor has abstained from discussion and votes on issues related to the proposed gravel pit.

The Klug Road neighbors group has argued that the town board improperly stripped away the wetland designation, which the group says was intended to protect the land. Town officials hold that they made the change because they learned the parcel was improperly zoned based on topography and soil types.

New operation plans submitted last month by Amon & Sons show the company has altered earlier plans for the gravel pit, splitting the project area into three operations phases, with a 20-acre area on the north to be mined in a second phase, and an 18-acre area on the south to be mined during a later, third phase.

Before, the proposed project had just two phases.

Amon & Sons proposes to dig gravel at the site for up to 12 hours a day on weekdays over of span of at least five years, with the pit potentially fueling gravel for construction of the Highway 26 bypass and other, undisclosed road projects.

Among other changes, Amon & Sons is offering to develop a haul road north through Traynor’s property onto County N, instead of an earlier proposal to route quarry traffic onto Klug Road past homes and a youth summer camp. Residents were outraged by that plan, and Amon & Sons eliminated it, along with earlier plans to have an on-site concrete plant, deep wells and wash ponds.

Those conditions could be formally voted on Monday by the planning and zoning committee. The group could make a recommendation to the board.

Even if the town approves the operation plan, it still would need permitting and zoning approval by at least one Rock County Board committee and the Wisconsin Department of Natural resources over shoreland zoning, access and environmental issues, officials have said.