The fight to stop a quarry in Belle Mina heads to court Tuesday in Limestone County.

A group of churches and residents have filed suit to block the quarry less than a half mile from the heart of Belle Mina, a Limestone County community that is home to a mixture of farmers in historic homes and low-income families.

The quarry site is north of Interstate 565 and is near an almost 400-acre site recently annexed by Huntsville where up to 3,000 homes and retail development is proposed.

Tuesday’s hearing in circuit court will determine whether the landowners of the quarry property can be named defendants in the case.

New Beginnings Covenant Ministries, Belle Mina Methodist Church, Jerusalem Primitive Baptist Church, New Heavan Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Brad Vice, Nina Perez and Sandra Diaz are plaintiffs in the case.

Named as defendants are Stoned LLC, Grayson Carter and Son Contracting, Elephants R Us and Landquest Properties LLC. Elephants R Us and Landquest Properties are the owners of the property.

The plaintiffs unsuccessfully fought to keep the Alabama Department of Environmental Management from issuing Stoned LLC a permit to discharge water from the quarry site and Grayson Carter & Son a permit to emit air pollutants from the rock crushing site.

Vice told AL.com at a public meeting in February 2024 that he and his wife have been losing sleep over the quarry and what it would do to their daughter’s health. He believes his home is the closest to the site.

He isn’t alone in being concerned about what particles in the air from operations of the quarry would do to the children of the community. The plaintiffs in the case also raise concerns about the impact discharge of water into Limestone Creek and its tributaries might make on the health of residents in the community.

Vice and Perez told AL.com at the meeting last year they were concerned about construction of the quarry doing structural damage to roads and homes in the community. Vice was among residents concerned property values would plummet. Perez was concerned that insurance rates would increase with the quarry’s operation.

According to court filings, operations at the quarry site are conducted 11 hours a day, six to seven days a week, often waking residents in the middle of the night with light and noise.

The filing said dust from rock crushing, topsoil removal and transporting the dirt covers the plaintiffs’ properties, interfering with the use and enjoyment of their properties.

The plaintiffs are also concerned that overtime, activities from the quarry will deplete the community’s groundwater and alter water levels in Limestone Creek and its tributaries in addition to structure damage to roads, homes and churches.

During the permitting process, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service voiced concerns about the impact of the quarry on endangered species in the area. And representatives from Auburn University wrote letters to ADEM about their concerns on the impact on the water levels at the 700-acre Auburn University experiment station located about a mile from the site.

During a public hearing in March of last year, Randy Thomason, a Grayson Carter & Son Contracting corporate officer, promised his company would be a good community citizen. And supporters of the quarry said it would bring much needed jobs to the community and revenue to Limestone County.

Grayson Carter & Son, an Athens company, is one of the companies contracted to work on road projects in the city of Huntsville.