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Construction firm allowed to operate from Kielian site

After much debate over the storage of asphalt millings at Kielian pit last month, the Sidney planning commission issued a conditional use permit last week to Werner Construction to do work out of the pit.

A conditional use permit is needed when a business or individual wants to perform activities on ground that isn’t zoned for those activities, but prefers to avoid the process of re-zoning that ground. Usually, conditional use permits are issued for temporary work.

Werner will be operating a hot mix plant for local projects out of the pit, according to Thomas Kielian of the Kielian Trust. Werner will be using millings already stored on the property for work on the links from Interstate 80 to Highway 30 at Sunol and Lodgepole. Work on the Lodgpole link will begin later this week, weather permitting.

The purpose of this paving is to make sure that if Interstate 80 is shut down that the links can withstand the additional traffic, said Mike Zanella with Werner Construction. Werner expects to spend 14 paving days on each project.

Denial of the permit at last month’s planning meeting was just a minor setback for the company, Zanella said. This work will help to rid the pit of millings stored on its property, he added.

“Nothing’s coming into the pit,” Zanella said. “Everything’s going out.”

The company plans to use all the millings stored on the Kielian property, Kielian said.

Representatives with Kielian Family Trust met with the planning commission last month to appeal the violation of a conditional use permit and the order to cease and desist storage of concrete and asphalt at the gravel pit.

The Kielian Family Trust was issued a conditional use permit to remove sand and gravel from this pit last November, but have been using the area for other, non-permitted uses as well, according to city officials. In this case, this particular plot of Kielian ground is zoned for agriculture, so the trust needs a conditional use permit to perform the commercial work of removing and selling gravel and sand.

The trust allegedly had a stockpile of excess asphalt grindings that it did not have permission to store there. About 7,000 tons of asphalt millings at the Kielian site are earmarked for the Werner link projects. The State of Nebraska generally hauls off extra millings after a state project is completed, Kielian said during the September meeting.

Kielian pit is located east of Sidney one half mile south of the intersection of Roads 20 and 117.

 

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