BS Summary: This article contains 20 faulty reasoning types, including Framing Effect, Optimism Bias, and Tu Quoque, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 16.7% saturation with 139 hits. Analysis detected 653 faulty-reasoning hits from 832 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 26% and a BS Rank of 15% (21,956 of 25,564 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 85.90% of the article peer group.
A 12-acre hill along Route 100 in Morristown.
Photo by Gordon Miller/Stowe Reporter
This story by Patrick Bilow first appeared in the News & Citizen on July 30, 2026.
After a two-year deliberation, the state Act 250 commission has rejected a Morristown business’s proposal to build a quarry operation on land across Route 100 from the Morrisville-Stowe Airport.
Garret Hirchak, CEO and founder of Manufactured Solutions Inc., has for years been trying to build an industrial park on the 89-acre property.
The project’s initial phase — and the cause of consternation among Morristown residents and some town officials — would have entailed extracting rock from a wooded knoll at a rate of 35,000 tons a year over 10 years.
According to application documents submitted by MSI, the quarry is incidental to the project, meaning the knoll must be removed to make way for buildings, but it’s also a revenue driver meant to help fund the industrial park.
Several Morristown residents have protested the project throughout the duration of its Act 250 review.
Their main concern is silica, a hazardous dust the quartz rock in the knoll would produce if crushed, according to Act 250 documents.
Opponents argued it could lead to dangerous lung diseases, including silicosis, if inhaled by humans.
The District 5 Act 250 commission, in its written decision about Hirchak’s project delivered July 24, determined the quarry would be “offensive and shocking.”
The commission stated that “removal of an 8.5-acre rock hill over a decade cannot be determined to be ‘incidental’ in the plain meaning of the word.”
It added that a quarry is not permitted in that area of Morristown, according to the town’s rules, and noted the operation would pose negative health impacts as well as constant noise and traffic associated with crushing and transporting material.
“The proposed continuous cycle of industrial activity will be maintained for a decade,” the commission’s letter reads.
“When contrasting the existing surroundings with the impacts associated with the proposed disturbance, the Commission finds the project is offensive and shocking.”
While the commission rejected the proposed quarry operation, it did not reject the industrial park.
The property can still accommodate most of MSI’s plans with the knoll intact.
However, it’s unclear whether MSI will move forward without the quarry, and Morristown Zoning Administrator Tyler Machia was unclear on Tuesday whether the project would appear again before the town Development Review Board.
Hirchak did not respond to a request for comment before publication.
Some in town have expressed support for an industrial park without a quarry.
The park, which would be the largest of its kind in the region, according to zoning officials, has been touted for its potential to create jobs and drive the local economy.
“I supported the industrial park, but I did not support the gravel extraction,” selectboard chair Don McDowell said in an interview this week.
“In my mind, the intent of the town plan was to restrict gravel extraction and those activities to the Route 15 corridor, not to the Route 100 corridor.”
The selectboard last year penned a letter to the Act 250 commission condemning the quarry and urging the commission to consider the project carefully.
The letter was sent at the behest of several members of the public who spoke at well-attended board meetings over the last year.
Hirchak or a representative from his company was scheduled to attend one of those meetings in February, and dozens of community members showed up with signs that read “Stop MSI Quarry,” but no one from the company showed up.
Thea Alvin, a Morristown resident who lives on Route 100 near MSI’s property, has been a prominent opponent of the quarry.
Last August, she and another resident, Kristin Fogdall, gave a thorough presentation to the selectboard about the negative impacts of the project.
“I’m excited but holding my breath,” Alvin said this week, of the quarry’s rejection.
“The Act 250 process is over.
We won.
We achieved our goals.
But now we wait to see what their next step will be.”
The Act 250 commission’s decision supersedes the Morristown Development Review Board’s 2023 approval of the quarry and industrial park.
Despite the project pushback from residents even three years ago, the board approved rock extraction as incidental to development, and an application was forwarded to Act 250 officials the following year.
In the wake of more recent opposition, the selectboard and planning commission have embarked on a process to tighten the town’s zoning language pertaining to rock extraction.
They are paying particular consideration to terms like “incidental,” which town leaders agree is open to wide interpretation during the review process.
That topic was the subject of a recent joint meeting between the selectboard and planning commission.
“The planning commission is working on language that they will bring back to the board to entertain sometime in the future,” McDowell said.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Regulators reject Route 100 quarry in Morristown .
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