The sand quarry on Golf Road in Palmerton is active again with plans for the future. Plans that include mining the larger portion of land on the other side of the road and building a concrete block manufacturing facility.

Earlier this month, the Lower Towamensing Township Zoning Hearing Board granted a variance to DTA Alliance Inc., owner of the quarry, to allow for the manufacturing facility. The area is zoned rural conservation, but Dan Connor, president of DTA Alliance, said the quarry predates the zoning designation.With the variance in place, DTA Alliance can move forward with planning the facility."We have to remove the old plant," Connor said. "The old conveyors will go away."But they plan to recycle much of the material and use some of it in the construction of the new manufacturing facility.Connor said the old plant has water and power lines already coming into it."To me, it makes sense to go ahead and develop that area," he said.The block plant was actually the idea of Dan Allen, the owner of DT Allen Contracting in Midland Park, New Jersey, the parent company of DTA Alliance."We knew we wanted to go on the west side of the road," Connor said. The current quarry is nearly depleted."What do you do with the land over here?" he said. "We have a close resource, so why not go ahead and use what we have?"The idea for the manufacturing facility was born.Although the plans are very preliminary, Connor said the manufacturing needs to be in a controlled environment from the weather.He expects the facility will include about 20,000 square feet for manufacturing, up to 30,000 square feet for indoor curing and about 3,000 square feet for offices."We're in development mode," he said. "There's a lot of potential here."Connor estimates that the manufacturing plant will employ 12 people, while the quarry will employ six people. Currently, he could use a few more employees for the quarry."We make some pretty sand," he said.It's Pennsylvania Department of Transportation certified for use as concrete sand and is great for ready-mix plants where it can be used to make molds.Connor said that many area companies that use sand in their production buy it from New Jersey and Western Pennsylvania, but could cut costs by buying it from DTA Alliance."Anywhere anyone can afford to run, we can supply," he said.The current quarry sits on about 100 acres. Connor plans to mine it throughout the rest of this year and then move mining to the other side of Golf Road where the company owns another 418 acres out to Mauch Chunk Road in Bowmanstown.Connor said there is more than 50 million tons of sand resource available the sandstone.Once mining is moved to the other side of Golf Road, then the next step is reclamation of the current site.The state Department of Environmental Protection requires that any mining done from 1972 on has to be graded to a 35 degree slope so that they are not sheer faces, Connor said.The sand quarry first opened in the early 1900s and sheer faces to exist in those sections. It does not come under the DEP rulings and would require too much fill to create a slope, he said. But the section near the road entrance will be graded to the required slope.The quarry does have some water retention ponds, but they often dry up in hot weather, he said. The water has shades of green to it, but that is due to algae growing in it.The quarry also has a deep well that it uses to separate the different sizes of particulate. Larger pieces of material can be used to make asphalt, while the smaller granules are good for concrete. Sand is graded A for finer sand and B for a more granular size.