Jun. 11—JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — If orange road cones bloom in June — Pennsylvania's state flower, as the joke goes — then tri-axle dump trucks will be busy around asphalt plants, like 40,000-pound bees around giant hives.

While they don't produce honey, the facilities generate a mix of stone aggregate and liquid asphalt that fosters economic productivity.

But spurred by fears of adverse impacts of that activity, many Richland Township residents are opposing Quaker Sales Corp.'s proposal for a new asphalt plant in their neighborhood.

Mine 37 Road is a country road. Residents of the area say they don't want their homes ruined with foul air, noise and truck traffic.

Dave Czajkowski, 73, lives on Second Street, less than half a mile east of acres upon acres of woods — and the proposed site of the asphalt plant.

"You work all your life to build a nice house and a place," he said. "Me and my wife, we like to watch the sunset on the porch. I don't want to smell asphalt."

At a May 18 zoning hearing hearing at Richland Township's municipal building, Donald Overdorff, president of Quaker Sales Corp., described a $10 million investment that would provide the company with a larger property for a new, modern facility to replace its 36-year-old plant in West Taylor Township.

Of the proposed site's 109 acres, five to six would be cleared for the plant pad, and another six acres would be cleared for storage of recycled asphalt.

Quaker Sales wants to relocate the plant by 2024. If the project comes to fruition, there would be nine employees working daily in the plant — carried over from the West Taylor Township site, Overdorff said.

Quaker Sales' existing sites in Johnstown and Northern Cambria are two of the five total asphalt plants in Cambria and Somerset counties. One of the competing asphalt plants, HRI, has been located in Richland Township since the 1980s.

'Amount of trucks'

A tri-axle truck barreled up Solomon Run Road past Yvette Miller's mailbox shortly after she retrieved her mail on a recent weekday afternoon. The truck slowed and entered the HRI asphalt plant about 300 yards away from her home.

The asphalt plant was there long before she and her husband, Dana Miller, moved in with their children about 14 years ago. Dana Miller said he hasn't been bothered by odors or noise from the plant.

"The only thing that's annoying is the amount of trucks," he said.

He said he occasionally smells the scent of asphalt in the air from his home, which is in a valley below the hill where HRI operates. But he said the geography of the proposed Quaker Sales plant, which would be level with homes in that area, could mean that residents around that plant may be affected by the smell to a greater degree.

Next to HRI's asphalt center is a concrete company. That area is zoned by township ordinance as a manufacturing district "in which the principal use of land may be for heavy industrial uses."

However, asphalt plants are not specifically assigned to any specific zones under township ordinance. Quaker Sales has requested a use variance under Richland's zoning ordinance to build and operate an asphalt plant in a "light industrial area."

More than 40 people who live in that area turned out for the May zoning hearing regarding Quaker Sales' plan. None of them expressed support for the project. The hearing was continued to allow more people to offer comments.

The third installment in a series of zoning hearings for Quaker Sales' plan is set for 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, according to township secretary Kim Stayrook. An ad is scheduled to appear in The Tribune-Democrat's Monday edition.

In addition to requesting a use variance to be able to build the plant in a light industrial zone, Quaker Sales is seeking a height variance to construct 87-foot-tall silos. A third request of the company is for a special exemption for a storage yard on the premises for aggregate — the stone used in the making of asphalt.

The township's definition of a light industrial district is "to permit development located and designed as to constitute a harmonious and appropriate part of the physical development of the township."

The neighborhood around the proposed plant site includes a playground, and the V.E. Erickson-Arbutus Little League baseball and softball complex is at 773 Eisenhower Blvd., across Eisenhower Boulevard from where the the plant would be built.

The possibility of an asphalt plant is not what residents signed up for when they purchased their homes there, said Caroline Mugerwa, whose home is half a mile away from the proposed site.

"My thought is they can build it, but not so close," she said.

Wind that rushes from the direction of the planned asphalt site can be felt strongest at the top of Old Farm Road, where homeowners each pay thousands of dollars in property taxes, according to Cambria County Assessment Office information.

With a direct view of a tree line that she doubts would block the sight of the entire plant, Mugerwa said she believes it's inevitable that the neighborhood's property values would decrease. She's already concerned about families that use the Little League fields.

"During the changing of games at the end, there are 50 cars coming in and out," she said. "Usually, there's an accident here every month."

Hundreds of trucks would be rolling onto Eisenhower Boulevard from the asphalt plant from April until November, she said.

"It's going to be too much," she said.

In a phone interview this week, Overdorff said the company has been looking for new sites to build a modern asphalt plant for 10 years.

"We've used help from (Johnstown Area Regional Industries), used Google Earth to look for large, flat-land zoned properly," he said. "We saw this as a vacant property in a light industrial area, and it could fit our needs to relocate our asphalt plant. Through GIS mapping, we found out who owners were ... and had an attorney reach out to them.

"It's just like our existing location — we operate within areas of residential houses," he said. "I don't see how it's different."

Quaker Sales' existing plant, on Asphalt Road in West Taylor Township, sits next to the region's sewage treatment plant, where there are no zoning ordinances.

Kathy Smith and her husband have lived happily for more than 30 years and raised two children at a home through a buffer of tall trees on a hill exactly a mile from the plant.

"We smell something from the sewage plant on occasion, but we don't hear anything coming from down there at the asphalt plant," she said, "and we don't smell anything coming from there."