Town Rewrote Quarry Permit Before 80-Foot Fall Blasts

← All news · July 23, 2026

Ahead of up to ten 80-foot development blasts at the Danvers Road quarry this fall, Swampscott's Earth Removal Advisory Committee rewrote the annual permit across about two hours and twenty minutes of meetings, with the company's attorney present at every one. It loosened some monitoring and notice rules, and the Select Board approved it unanimously in under five minutes with no public comment.

Swampscott approved a rewritten quarry permit this spring, ahead of a fall of development blasting at the Danvers Road quarry — up to ten blasts using drill holes about 80 feet deep — to merge two of the quarry’s working benches, which will then sit closer to Swampscott Road.

Across four meetings totaling about two hours and twenty minutes of open session, the five-member Earth Removal Advisory Committee went through the annual earth-removal permit line by line, with the quarry’s attorney present at every session. The committee loosened several monitoring and notice requirements, tightened others, and left the settlement-locked blast limits alone.

The benches are the stepped terraces cut into the rock face. Merging two of them puts the working face closer to Swampscott Road, a placement that “may affect sound emissions and potential impacts to abutters during blasting,” the committee’s minutes say.

The rewrite happened in a cycle in which ERAC’s own minutes record that the town could not confirm 2025’s monitoring had happened. Only two of three required particulate and fugitive-dust tests were performed last year, the most recent in May 2025. The year’s blast reports went unanalyzed by the town’s consultant, Brierly, “due to litigation.” On heavy metals, the February 19 minutes record that Amrize’s attorney, Chris Drucas, “does not believe that testing is being performed.”

The Select Board approved the rewritten permit unanimously on June 17, in under five minutes, with no public comment.

How the permit works

Amrize, formerly Aggregate Industries, operates Swampscott’s only quarry. The permit runs the fiscal year, July 1 to June 30. The company applies each March 31. The Earth Removal Advisory Committee, or ERAC, recommends and the Select Board approves.

The document runs 17 pages and 36 sections, chair Joe Markarian told the board on June 3. ERAC has five voting seats: three Select Board appointees, one from the Conservation Commission and one from the Board of Health. It is staffed by community development director Marzie Galazka.

Its reach is narrower than it looks. Bill Carian, who presented the recommendation on June 3, told the board the blast limits are locked by a litigation settlement: “We don’t touch those at all.”

Rules changed May 6

Most changes came at a 53-minute session on May 6 that produced 26 numbered items. The minutes name who proposed what.

Markarian had floated making blast-report analysis discretionary on February 19, on the rationale that all readings were below 4 PPV. That was the same meeting where the committee learned the reports had not been analyzed at all. ERAC adopted the change: independent blast-consultant reports are now required “only at the option of the town.”

The deletion of future-permit-year testing language came from the applicant’s side. Drucas and Jarrett Temple of Amrize “recommended removing language that referenced testing requirements for future permit years.”

Advance notice to the Board of Health before a dust test dropped from 14 days to three, “recognizing the need for flexibility due to weather and operational changes.” The requirement to give that board a description of the testing protocols was dropped “after confirming that the Board of Health typically does not engage with quarry testing protocols,” with an option to reinstate it on request.

ERAC also debated running fewer than three dust and noise tests a year, since “fewer tests may be sufficient if results remain consistent.” It kept three, to revisit annually.

The same session tightened other rules. Work outside the designated excavation area must now cease immediately, with a public hearing before it can resume. One dust test must occur during a blasting event. One test is pinned to July 1–August 30 and another to November; the third stays “as otherwise appropriate.”

The permit specifies drill-hole depth as 60 feet, including subdrilling. The minutes do not explain how that limit applies to the fall development blasting, which uses about 80-foot holes.

ERAC approved it in six minutes

On May 27, three of the five members met for six minutes, 6:19 to 6:25 p.m. Gary Barden and the Fire Department’s representative were absent. Drucas and Temple attended remotely.

Markarian said he, John Picariello and Tonia Bandrowicz had spent significant time reviewing the permit. Asked whether corrections were needed, Picariello said he had not yet reviewed the most recent version, citing time constraints.

Markarian proposed approving it anyway, “with the understanding that any technical corrections could be addressed at the Select Board meeting.” The committee did. Drucas and Temple confirmed before the vote that they had reviewed the permit and its two memoranda and found them satisfactory.

Galazka was told to send the package to the five board members, the town administrator and Amrize the next morning, “to ensure simultaneous receipt.” Markarian and Bandrowicz would brief the two newly elected board members, Wayne Spritz and Ted Dooley, on the permit’s history at 4 p.m. the next day. The briefing was announced in advance on ERAC’s own record. The record reviewed for this article does not show whether it happened.

Those minutes were clerk-stamped July 23: eight weeks after the meeting and three weeks after the permit took effect. ERAC does post its minutes, which puts it ahead of the Finance Committee, the Capital Improvement Committee and the Board of Health (prior coverage).

Select Board approved it in under five minutes

Markarian appeared alone on June 17. “I don’t have a quorum here,” he said. “You have our recommended permit. There are no changes since we met two weeks ago.”

Chair Katie Phelan called for public comment: “Seeing none.” Dooley moved approval, Spritz seconded, it passed unanimously, and the board voted to affix its signatures electronically.

Dooley’s sequence is in public documents: ERAC member of record on February 19; off the attendance lists by April 15; elected to the Select Board April 28; named as a briefing recipient in the May 27 minutes; mover of the approval June 17.

Board of Health role disputed

The Board of Health has signed the quarry permit since about 1994, when noise regulation was that board’s exclusive purview under the old town charter. Asked on June 3 what its participation had been since, a voice in the room answered, “Zero participation.”

Carian told the board the June 17 recommendation “will not include the signatures of the Board of Health,” since Article XIII requires no such sign-off. The board approved the permit “as presented.” The executed document is not in the public record reviewed for this article.

Board of Health chair Gargi Cooper argued the opposite in an email read into the June 3 record, writing for herself since her board had not met on it. Article XIII bars a permit if operations endanger health, quality of life or groundwater, and seats one of her members on ERAC.

“If public health and environmental impacts are central permitting criteria but the Board of Health has no meaningful role in evaluating or addressing the impacts,” she asked, “who is responsible for making those determinations?” Her board, she added, had not been given the chance to appoint its ERAC representative.

Two residents pressed the monitoring. A woman from 19 Essex Street called three-times-a-year air monitoring “totally inadequate”: “It doesn’t follow the EPA regs. Three days a year tells you what’s happening on those three days only and it leaves out almost 350 other days.”

George Allen, elected to the Board of Health in April after 40 years as an air-pollution scientist, said the 2025 sampling “is insufficient to be used for comparison to and determine compliance with health-based standards for PM10 or crystalline silica.” He then bounded the claim: “This does not mean there is a health hazard due to quarry activities. It means we do not have sufficient data to demonstrate that there are no health hazards.”

At the board table, Markarian declined to reopen the testing regime there: “I am not receptive at all at making changes to the way the test studies are done now… It needs a thorough discussion at the committee level, not at the select board level.” He resisted giving that board approval power, saying a second approving body “just sets up conflict, that’s not good policy, that’s not good government,” and pushed instead for its input on the committee.

Picariello gave up the Board of Health’s ERAC seat; the Board of Health appointed Allen to it on June 16; and on June 17 the Select Board reappointed Picariello as one of its own three appointees. ERAC entered the new permit year with a full five voting members.

Air monitoring returns to ERAC

Of Allen’s monitoring proposals, Phelan said after the vote: “Hopefully now we have the runway to see if any of those can be instituted for next year.” Markarian said, “Those discussions are just starting with Amrize, and we’re going to get on that fast.”

ERAC’s July 20 agenda put air monitoring on as a standalone item, the first since Allen was seated, eleven days after the Board of Health took up “possible revisions to Quarry dust monitoring requirements.” The agenda also put Article XIII itself up for review.

The same agenda included an earth-removal application from Swampscott Multi Owner LLC at 555 Essex Street, the Vinnin Square mall parcel where CenterCorp’s redevelopment won Planning Board site plan approval last year. The link between the LLC and CenterCorp is an address match in Planning Board records, not a corporate-registry confirmation. The Article XIII machinery built around one quarry would govern a commercial dig in a retail district.

Sources

Gaps named above: the executed FY27 permit and the two memoranda ERAC distributed May 28 are not in the public record reviewed here; whether the May 28 briefing occurred is undocumented; the minutes do not explain how the 60-foot drill-hole limit relates to the fall’s 80-foot development blasts; the 19 Essex Street resident’s name was not stated on the record; the Swampscott Multi Owner LLC–CenterCorp link is inferred from address.