The Sands Road area is zoned for rural-agricultural land use, but sand and gravel mining is allowed with a “special exception” to the zoning code. Records show that the county has repeatedly approved or renewed special exceptions there over the last three decades.

 

In 1991, over neighbors’ objections, landowner Raymond Riddle got a special exception to mine about a third of 163 wooded acres along Sands Road. “This office is mindful of the concerns of residents about truck traffic,” the hearing officer wrote, “and many of those concerns are reasonable.” But he said the operator had agreed to limit truck activity to 200 round trips a day and that the facility would be “closed out within five years.”

 

Five years later, Riddle decided to lease the sand and gravel mine to Chaney and petitioned the county to extend the special exception. A civic association agreed not to oppose it under certain conditions, including no increase in truck traffic and extending the operation for no more than 10 years. The hearing officer, citing Chaney’s “good reputation and past performance,” approved it for another 15 years.

 

Also in 1996, the county approved another special exception on the other side of Sands Road to mine sand and gravel for 25 years on a tract that borders the Patuxent River. The operator there, not Chaney at the time, pledged to limit truck traffic to no more than 40 round trips per day.

 

By 2016, the county had authorized Chaney, which had taken over mining on both sides of Sands Road, to expand those operations to other portions of the 451-acre tract. The approved truck limit had grown to 390 round trips a day — nearly double what had been the maximum for just the Riddle site 30 years earlier.

 

Within the prescribed 10-hour limit on operations, that works out to a truck rolling in every 3 minutes or so to pick up sand and gravel before heading back out on the road again.