A coalition of Comal County residents fighting to keep Alabama-based Vulcan Materials Company from turning a former ranch into a 1,500-acre, open-pit limestone quarry at the southwest corner of State Highway 46 and FM 3009 issued a community alert today after learning just before the holidays the company extended its Water Pollution Abatement Plan (WPAP) to include proposed turn lanes.
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) approved the company’s original WPAP on July 8, 2024, effectively greenlighting the controversial project and ending years of regulatory wrangling between Vulcan Materials, Stop 3009 Vulcan Quarry, and Preserve Our Hill Country Environment (PHCE).
Alabama-based Vulcan Materials is the nation’s largest producer of construction aggregates.
Last year, the two activist groups appealed that decision to the 353rd District Court in Austin.
On Dec. 11, 2025 their case was assigned to Judge Sherine Thomas.
“Approving additional quarry-related infrastructure while the primary approval is being challenged puts our water resource at serious risk and undermines the court process,” PHCE President Milann Guckian said in a statement issued today. Her retirement property shares a fenceline with the quarry site.
Approval now “would cause irreversible impacts before the court rules.”
She’s asking the public to email comments opposing the amended WPAP to the TCEQ’s Edwards Aquifer Protection Program (EAPP) by Jan. 11. That address is eapp@tceq.texas.gov.
For more information and to submit a comment, click here.
PHCE argues the proposed turn lanes would create new impervious cover and polluted runoff and exist only to serve the quarry.
FM 3009 and nearby roads are heavily traveled by school buses, families, and residents, the group said.
Guckian said cities of New Braunfels, Garden Ridge and the Trinity Groundwater Conservation District were not included on the application’s distribution list.
“Given the potential traffic impacts, aquifer-and-watershed connections and community concerns in those municipalities, this omission suggests incomplete notification and undermines the opportunity for meaningful local government input, which is crucial for comprehensive environmental review,” she said.
Pape-Dawson, a civil engineering company hired by Vulcan, on Nov. 25, 2025 filed a letter with TCEQ requesting a review of its Vulcan Comal Quarry Turn Lanes Recharge Zone Exception Application.
Click here to see that document.
The requested “exception” would authorize clearing, grading, and limited demolition of portions of the existing road for the construction of turn lanes and drainage. The increase in impervious cover would be approximately 1,469 acres or approximately 11.1% of the project area.
Pape-Dawson said there are no springs or streams on the proposed quarry site, and the overall potential for fluid migration to the Edwards Aquifer is low.
The proposed quarry is ringed by residential areas in Bulverde, Spring Branch, Garden Ridge, and New Braunfels that are home to an estimated 12,000 people.
The project would stretch across nearly three miles of the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone, the source of water for over two million people in Central Texas.
On its website, VulcanComalCountyQuarry.com, Vulcan said its proposed quarry is strategically positioned along Highway 46 to “responsibly support the local economy and meet the growing community needs, including infrastructure and transportation-safety improvements.”
“We will protect and conserve wafter resources,” Vulcan said. “Rock will be extracted from the upper surface above the aquifer water table, water will be recycled and Trinity Aquifer usage will be far less than a residential subdivision.”
In 2023 interview, Annalisa Peace, executive director of the Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance, said aggregate operations like Vulcan’s proposed quarry already use 21.4% of Comal County’s water supply, and none of that is recycled.