Vulcan proposes asphalt plant at Edsall facility
Vulcan Materials Co. is proposing to add an asphalt plant to its Edsall concrete production facility on Industrial Drive in the Springfield area of Mason District.
The company plans to file an application with the county within the next few days.
Vulcan is currently building a new scale for weighing concrete, a new quality control lab, and a new entrance on Edsall Road, said Glen Cobb, director of external relations at Vulcan’s corporate office in Herndon, at a community meeting on Aug. 25 at the Mason District Government Center.
Those projects were approved by the Board of Supervisors in 2018, with the requirement that they be moved away from the Resource Protection Area on the site.
At that time, Vulcan had also proposed adding an asphalt plant, which was met with strong community opposition due to concerns about air pollution, quality of life, and property values. The company withdrew the asphalt facility from the proposal in 2018.
The company has now resurfaced its proposal for an asphalt facility with about six silos. It will be located “as far from residential areas as possible,” said Cristen Solor, an environmental manager for Vulcan’s Northeast Division. The asphalt will be sold for road construction.
Related story: Supervisors approve Vulcan expansion
According to Cobb, the delay in moving from project approval to construction is due to several factors, including Covid, “the complexity of a project with a lot of moving parts,” and issues with Fairfax County’s PLUS land use system.
A 6-foot-tall fence will be installed between the Vulcan property and the single-family homes in the Edsall Park neighborhood. Vulcan is also adding bigger wheel washers for the concrete mixer trucks entering the property.
Vulcan Materials Co. sells concrete to developers, general contractors, and engineering companies, Cobb said. The concrete is made from granite mined at a stone quarry the company owns in Warrenton. The rocks are shipped to the Vulcan plant via the Norfolk Southern Railway, which runs through the property.
Vulcan is a publicly traded company headquartered in Birmingham, Ala., that operates hundreds of facilities across the U.S. The Edsall facility has a ready-mix concrete plant, aggregate sales yard, a concrete recycling facility, a quality control testing lab, a fleet of 26 cement mixers, and 100 employees.
The Vulcan plant in Springfield supplied concrete for the Inova hospitals under construction at Landmark and Springfield, Bren Mar Park Elementary School, and West Springfield High School, among other developments.