GUILDERLAND — As the snow melts, one big mining operator near Route 158 on Stitt Road has been told by the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation to pay $10,000 in late regulatory fees or face suspension and formal enforcement proceedings, while another, smaller, miner on Stitt Road hopes to go before the zoning board on April 18 to seek final approval from the town.

Frederick Wagner plans to mine five acres on Stitt Road and last month got a permit from the DEC to do so, but he still needs a permit from the town.

William M. Larned & Sons, which operates a 104-acre mine on Stitt Road, has paid $4,000 in fines to the DEC for bringing in and then failing to remove large quantities of materials that were not approved as fill for parts of the mine no longer in use.

Permittees must also pay the DEC an annual fee of $8,000 for affected land larger than 30 acres, and Larned failed to pay that fee for 2017. The company’s schedule of compliance required the company to have paid a regulatory fee of $10,177.54, including penalties and interest, to the DEC by March 21.

According to a March 29 notice about suspension of his mining permit, company owner Tim Larned has until 15 days from his receipt of the letter to pay the regulatory fee, which now stands at $10,210.42, in order to continue mining under his current permit.

Through a staff member, Larned said on Wednesday that his company’s engineer, Paul Buzash, had died unexpectedly in July and that this had “left things unsettled.” It took time, Larned said, for the company to gain access to Buzash’s computer files and other records.

Larned said that everything now is being taken care of, and that the DEC had agreed to a change and a reduction in the bond. The company will pay it, Larned said, adding that he had spent a great deal of money on upgrading Stitt Road, estimating the amount the company spent on this, from 2017 through 2018, to be “at least $600,000.”

The DEC said on Wednesday that the figure of $10,210.42 quoted in the letter is correct, and that the amount has not been reduced. There is a process by which Larned could dispute fines that he believes to be incorrect, the DEC said.

While the fees remain outstanding, Larned had recently settled an earlier DEC fine. The company had a mined-land reclamation-renewal permit effective from May 2016 through May 2021, according to a DEC order on consent. DEC staff saw the unapproved materials during an inspection of the mine in April 2017, and the agency then ordered Larned to remove the materials or submit a permit-modification application, since they were not part of the mined land-use plan.

After receiving an extension from Nov. 1, 2017 to Dec. 31 of that year, the company failed to remove the materials.

In addition to settling his DEC fines, Larned, whose company is headquartered at 544 Burdeck St. in Rotterdam, has fulfilled a decades-old agreement with the town to repave Stitt Road.

Stitt Road repaved

Formerly a private road, Stitt was not up to town standards. The road, which was repaved at Larned’s expense, will soon be dedicated to the town, according to Supervisor Peter Barber and Highway Superintendent Steve Oliver.

Oliver told The Enterprise that work to bring Stitt Road up to town standards has been completed and the road has been repaved, up to the section where the houses begin. From that point, it remains private, he said.

The work — a source of contention between the company and the town for about three decades — was completed last fall by Larned & Sons. In addition to the repaving, the road was moved further away from the precipitous edge of the Larned mine.

Some of the land for the new road was owned by Wagner, who hopes to begin mining in the area soon, and who donated the land in a show of good will toward the town and Stitt Road neighbors. “I’m trying to work with everybody,” Wagner told The Enterprise last fall.

The town still needs to go through a dedication process, said Oliver.

There is no striping on the road, and the town does not plan to put any on, he said, “because the volume of traffic is so low.”

Oliver said that the project of moving Stitt Road had been going on for 30 years and that it was “nice to see it come to a conclusion.”

The responsibility for bringing the road up to town standards was Larned’s, and the company had Callanan Industries on Kings Road do the work, Oliver said.

Barber said this week that the town has owned the majority of the road, while Larned has owned a part of it, and that Larned’s portion still needs to be transferred to the town.

The private section will continue to be owned by the homeowners, Barber confirmed.

The dedication process, which includes checking that the road is engineered correctly and submitting a description of the road to the town board so that it can formally decide whether to take it over, Barber said, is almost complete.

At that point, the town will own the length of the road up to the private section.

Mining permit for Wagner

Wagner, who hopes to mine five acres of his 29-acre parcel at 6457 Stitt Road, received a mining permit from the DEC in late March, he told The Enterprise this week. His next and final step is to apply to the town for a special-use permit.

His parcel is zoned agricultural. Guilderland allows mining in an agricultural district with a special-use permit, which requires first getting a mining permit from the DEC.

Wagner is the owner of Helderberg Excavating & Trucking, at 6599 Route 158. His mined-land reclamation permit term runs through March 20, 2023.

By June 15, Wagner will need to relocate the access road he made from his parcel to Route 158, according to the permit.

Earlier, Wagner built the road before asking the state’s Department of Transportation for permission and was told by the DOT to block it off, which he did, with three large concrete blocks.

Bryan Viggiani, public information officer for the DOT, told The Enterprise last June that connecting to a state road such as Route 158 requires a highway work permit, which Wagner had not received. In issuing such a permit, Viggiani said, the DOT would consider issues including sight distance and proximity to other roads.

Guilderland’s chief building and zoning inspector, Jacqueline Coons, said that Wagner will be required to move the road further from Osborne Road.

By the end of June, he must regrade and revegetate, as necessary, any areas affected by the move of the road, she said. Wagner must also move all of his topsoil berms, the permit says, by May 15 and regrade and revegetate as necessary by the end of May.

The mine’s hours of operation will be from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday through Friday, and from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday. The mine will be closed on Sunday and on six major holidays.

Wagner’s special-use permit application will likely be on the agenda for the zoning board’s meeting at 7 p.m. on April 18, said Coons.

Neighbors within 750 feet of Wagner’s property will receive notice of the public hearing by the zoning board, Coons said.

Neighbors may come and express any concerns, “just as they would at any public hearing,” she said. The zoning board is not the only agency involved, and the DEC has already imposed certain requirements, but the zoning board can still do what is within its power, Coons said, as long as it doesn’t counteract DEC decisions.

The Stitt Road site would be Wagner’s only mine, he said. He has another site, at the end of Maeotsa Lane, off Hurst Road, where the company processes material that is stockpiled, rather than mined, he said; there, on land where his father and grandfather previously ran a gravel pit, the company screens topsoil and makes and screens compost.

In November 2016, Wagner was fined $4,000 by the DEC for mining on the site without a permit; he paid $2,000 at the time and $2,000 was suspended provided that he remains in compliance.

Wagner said this week that he is eager to get started and is looking forward to going before the zoning board as soon as possible.

“I’ve got a ton of money tied up in this,” he said.