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Company ends plan for asphalt plant 
By David Dinell
Last Updated: January 28, 2016

An asphalt plant won't be built near Kechi after all. 

In just a few weeks, opponents of the proposed plant managed to bring the project to a halt. 

Citing intense opposition, officials with Flint Hills Materials, the company planning the project at 6609 N. Woodlawn, just outside the Kechi city limits, withdrew a request for a needed conditional-use permit to build the plant.

The topic had been scheduled for the Jan. 21 meeting of the Wichita/Sedgwick County Metropolitan Area Planning Commission, but it was removed from the agenda at the last minute. 

While the company can reapply for the permit, officials have already said they aren't interested in doing that and will look at other sites, thus the Kechi proposal is done.  

That has made opponents such as Donna Frick happy. 

"I'm very grateful and very pleased with the way it turned out," she said.

It also was unexpected.

"I thought they were pretty determined," she said. "I was surprised they withdrew." 

Then again, Frick said she didn't think company officials ever foresaw all of the resistance and the public outcry against the plant. 

A Jan. 12 meeting of the Kechi Planning Commission drew an overflow crowd to Kechi City Hall. 

While the proposed plant is not in the city limits, it is in what is known as its "area of influence," and thus the board had some say in the issue. 

It voted to recommend not allowing the requested permit. 

Frick, who lives south of where the plant was proposed, said she only learned about it when she was notified by neighbors. 

While she is more than 1,000 feet from the site — the distance the law requires notification — that's still too close, she said. 

Frick was dismayed that the MAPC didn't take in the opinions of nearby residents when it issued its initial approval recommendation. 

"It was very pro-applicant," she said.

Another resident, John Speer, also was pleased with the outcome.  

"I think it was the right thing to do," he said. "We need asphalt plants but the location was just too close to residences. It should be in a heavy industrial area, not in a light industrial site." 

Speer doesn't believe this rejection represents any anti-business sentiment among Kechi residents. 

"We don't have a problem with another business going in on that site," he said.

Speer said he would be fine with the plant being a couple of miles east of Kechi, such as near K-254 and Greenwich. 

"It's just that there are some pretty nice houses in this area," he said, and those houses were there before the proposed plant. 

"If I came here 15 years ago and there was an asphalt plant on that site, then I wouldn't want to build there," he said. 

Speer lives less than a half mile west of where the plant would have been and would have been the closest property to its west. 

Speer, who only learned of the zoning meeting a few days before it was scheduled, said he's in favor of the city banning asphalt plants within the city limits, as was proposed as its Jan. 14 council meeting. 

"We don't want this to happen again," he said "We don't want someone to think that's OK."

The crowd that showed up at the zoning meeting was "pretty amazing," he said. 

"I know they didn't have any idea there was going to be that type of opposition," he said.

Chad Bledsoe, one of two managing partners of Flint Hills, agreed that they're not interested in putting their business where it's not wanted. 

"We want to be in business somewhere where it's good for everyone, not just us," Bledsoe said. "It was very apparent that they rather us not be there so we obliged and we'll find somewhere better."

Bledsoe and his business partner, Warren Harshman, have other sites in mind in Sedgwick County, but he declined to disclose their locations. It will have to be close to a highway as trucking asphalt is a major expense, he said.   

The two didn't have any idea of the opposition to the plant, especially since the county supported it. 

"It was a bit of a surprise to us," Bledsoe said.

And while there was a chance that they would get approval, despite the opposition, there was no point to proceeding, he said. 

The environmental cautions were a bit overstated, said Bledsoe, who has been in the asphalt business for 21 years. 

"Our plan called for two-thirds less emissions than required by KDHE and EPA and those standards aren't easy to meet," he said.

There are asphalt plants throughout the county, including one in Park City, and they didn't get the opposition the way Kechi did, he said. 

"My mother-in-law lives next to one near West and I-235, and it doesn't bother anyone," he said. 

Opponents of the Kechi plant are simply glad the issue is done. 

"We applaud them for realizing that it was just not the right location," Speer said. 





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