For now, it's a gently sloping mix of prairie grass, native flowers and pine trees, which is just the way Kim Olien likes to see it on the drive to and from her home in the country.

But within the next two or three years, the mix of pasture, pine and small grain just north of Hidden Valley Road and on the west side of Sturgis Road is likely to become a quarry for nearby GCC Dacotah cement. That's a reality that Olien faces with a resigned shrug.

"It's too bad. It'll be an eyesore for us there," Olien said Sunday, during a short break in yard work at the home she shares with her husband, Greg. "But they're going to mine it, regardless of what we think."

Like her neighbors in the small, casually planned development of 17 homes about a mile west from the first GCC quarry sign on Hidden Valley Road, Olien is accustomed to living with limestone mines.

The Pete Lien & Sons quarry stands out against the pine hills to the north. The GCC Dacotah quarry operation is to the southeast. An almost-played-out Hills Materials quarry stretches for a half mile along Sturgis Road as it heads into Rapid City to the south.

And about three-quarters of a mile to the southwest of Olien's place, the new Hills Materials quarry is in full operation, often much to her chagrin.

"It's nice and peaceful out here right now," she said Sunday afternoon. "But come back tomorrow at 9 a.m. It'll be a lot different."

Hills Materials trucks use the punished-and-patched asphalt of Hidden Valley Road to haul limestone from the quarry to the company's processing plant near the old quarry on Sturgis Road. Olien isn't thrilled about the quarry. But she's more aggravated by the trucks.

"They're actually more of a concern for us than the quarries," Olien said. "How would you like it, having them go right past your front door?"

Yet, Olien understands the realities of life along the rich limestone seam that underlies much of the surface on either side of Sturgis Road from the Hills Materials headquarters to Black Hawk. The valuable limestone deposits, which the South Dakota Cement Plant began mining in the 1920s, are now being extracted by GCC Dacotah cement - formerly the state Cement Plant - Hills Materials and Pete Lien & Sons.

"We're all pretty much on the same seam: the Minnekahta limestone formation, which really forms a circle around the Black Hills," GCC Environmental Manager Gene Nelson said.

Limestone is a useful rock, providing construction materials, lime and the main ingredient for cement production. Its extraction comes with substantial benefits to the area, including jobs, tax revenue and materials useful in many industries. It comes with costs, too, including those paid by Olien and her neighbors in what they consider to be a reduced quality of life, especially when the trucks rumble past.

"We live in the country for the peace and quiet," she said.

Officials for all three companies engaged in mining said they try to work with neighboring property owners to reduce conflicts and impacts on property nearby. That work includes informing those in the neighborhood that a piece of land is likely to be mined someday. That's what the signs announcing a future quarry are intended to do along Hidden Valley and Sturgis roads.

"That's specifically why we put the signs up, so people would know what's coming," Nelson said.

The companies have made safety and environmental advancements over the years to reduce the problems of the past. That's especially obvious in dust control, Nelson said.

"If you go back a few years, all of the industries in the quarrying area agreed to voluntary fugitive dust control," he said. "Everybody agreed to the best available technology."

That technology has helped improve air quality in northwest Rapid City so that it meets air quality standards.

Restoration work also will also try to return land to as close to its former state as possible, he said.

"We want to be a good steward," he said. "When the cement plant started, we were in the north 40 pasture. We realize that Rapid City has grown around us. It's our intent to be a good neighbor."

GCC has had a state mining license on the signed land along Hidden Valley Road for years. But Nelson said the company is getting closer to actually mining limestone at the site.

"I'd guess it would be in the next couple of years, for sure," he said.

GCC trucks limestone to its plant from the long-standing quarry north of the plant and east of Sturgis Road. But it is considering the use of a conveyor system to carry limestone from the quarry west of the Sturgis Road back to the plant.

Pete Lien & Sons does that now, with a two-mile-long conveyor that runs through a tunnel under the highway to the company processing facilities and lime plant. It's quieter than trucking and produces less dust, but it also costs $500 a foot to build, according to Lien officials.

Nelson said that's all being figured in as GCC plans for the new quarry west of Sturgis Road, which would likely have a 10- to 11-year working life.

"It's a lot smaller" than the company's existing quarry, he said.

Nelson said the company hasn't yet decided between a conveyor and trucking. But even if it trucks, it will send trucks under Sturgis Road in a tunnel.

"Either route, the conveyor or trucks that we choose, we'd go underneath the highway," he said.

The planned quarry site is directly across the highway from GCC property east of Sturgis Road.

Although Hills Materials continues to use the quarry east of Sturgis Road, its mining increasingly focuses on the newer quarry in the hills above St. Martin Monastery.

"It's on the downhill run," Hills Materials President Lynn Cading said about the old quarry. "We're mining up behind St. Martin's now."

The quarry is in a difficult location for a conveyor to reach. Hills Materials trucks haul about half a mile north on an access road, then about a mile and a quarter east on Hidden Valley Road, then south a mile or so to the company headquarters.

Along the way, they pass Olien's place - time after time after time.

"We don't like it, the dust, the noise, what it does to the road," she said. "We feel like we were here first. My husband grew up here. His folks are next door. The mining came in around us. But we don't have much choice but to deal with it."

Contact Kevin Woster at 394-8413 or kevin.woster@rapidcityjournal.com