A researcher’s discovery may stymie a new quarry next to Umstead Park | Opinion

The Wake Stone Corp. quarry on the property it has leased from Raleigh-Durham International Airport is 500-feet deep.

The company is good at digging.

But so is Natalie Lew.

Wake Stone digs for granite, but Lew – an opponent of the company’s plan to open a second pit on the property adjacent to William B. Umstead State Park – digs through records.

Now Lew thinks her mining has struck gold. She found old records that she says show the proposed pit would intrude onto land that actually belongs to the park. She contends that a 1970s survey improperly gave the airport 14 acres beyond the 69 acres the airport authority thought it was buying for a runway it never built.

Lew did her research on behalf of The Umstead Coalition, a group of park supporters who have long opposed the quarry expansion as disruptive to the park, but has been unable to block it. Now maybe it can.

“Everyone needs to step back and put a pause on this and reevaluate it based on the truth,” Lew told me.

Tim Walton, director of the State Property Office, responded to Lew’s findings in a letter to the state Division of Parks and Recreation. Walton said there may be various differences between maps, but not to a significant extent.

While the Division of Parks and Recreation is free to request a new measurement of the boundaries, Walton wrote, “It is the opinion of our office that the expense of a new survey of the boundary line in question is not warranted.”

Jean Spooner, who heads The Umstead Coalition, said her group is asking the state for a new survey. If the state won’t do it, The Umstead Coalition will pay for one.

At a news conference last week, Spooner said the apparent border line discrepancy needs to be addressed. “We need to correct this oversight and ensure that the land given to our state to preserve and protect is preserved and protected,” she said.

Lew, a 58-year-old Raleigh resident, is an independent contractor who does research related to clinical trials. She stands by her findings.

What matters, Lew said, isn’t what later surveys show. It is what the first maps show. The 1937 park purchase deed, she said, “is the Bible for the Umstead State Park property boundary.”

Over the last couple of years, Lew carved out time to pore over documents in federal archives in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., related to the park’s creation in the 1930s.

“What better place to find that truth than in the original records?” she said..

When she compared an original park map and more recent documents defining the park’s property lines, she noticed what appears to be a discrepancy that gives the airport land that was within the park’s original borders.

“I said, ‘Wait a minute, that can’t be right,’ ” she said. She checked again and the gap in the maps remained clear. “That was a big eureka! moment when you could say: I’m 110% certain.”

The difference, she said, would mean that Wake Stone has put 14 acres of park land into its mining plan.

“Why can Wake Stone and the airport come in and take parkland basically because of an error?” Lew asked. “It’s public parkland. We can’t just give it up to a private company.”

The dispute between The Umstead Coalition and Wake Stone has dragged on for years. Court cases are pending regarding how long the company’s original permit allows for excavating rock at the site..

Now Lew has raised questions about whether the park’s land was improperly taken and whether Wake Stone’s expansion plan relies on errant boundaries.

Wake Stone said in a statement that it will adjust its expansion plans if the project extends into the park’s property. But it’s anticipating it would result in a modification, not a halt..

Lew hopes her research will stop Wake Stone’s next project and protect the park from more decades of noise and truck traffic.

“We have a treasure to preserve,” she said. “It was my way of being able to contribute.”

Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-404-7583, or nbarnett@ news observer.com