Joan Love's spirits fell when the signs went up.

"Future Mining Site: Pete Lien & Sons."

They hang on new fences like silent sentinels, warning against trespass and foreshadowing change along Peaceful Pines Road - which, Love and other local residents fear, won't be nearly as peaceful when the mining begins.

And it will begin, almost certainly. It's just a question of when.

"They're coming," Love said from a recliner in her living room, where church-like south windows offer a panoramic view of the forest. "They're coming, and there goes the neighborhood - literally."

The "neighborhood" is actually a scattering of homes strung out through the forested hills and open meadows west of the main body of Black Hawk along Sturgis Road. Attracted by the country, the quiet and the convenient closeness to Rapid City, people like Love built homes and lives based on an idyllic and perhaps naive assumption that that their peaceful worlds would never change.

Many, including Love, now say they were surprised when new fences went up along the road and black-and-yellow signs appeared. And they were further startled by machines that began removing trees from woods that some presumed to be Black Hills National Forest. And, indeed, the U.S. Forest Service owns land in the area. But so does Pete Lien & Sons.

"I had no idea they were down there," Love said. "I knew it was forest service here behind the house. But I didn't know Lien was there, just over the hill."

That was no secret, however. Many locals have known for years that Pete Lien & Sons has property in the area, a mile or two north of the company's active limestone-mining and processing operations on either side of Sturgis Road.

All of that property has been in company hands for at least 20 years, and some of it much longer. And even the North Black Hawk Unit, part of which runs up to Peaceful Pines Road, had been marked as such in the past.

"It's been fenced and posted before. It's just that the fences and signs got old," Pete Lien & Sons spokesman Scott Landguth said. "I think, really, that they were surprised by our activity."

That activity included the new fences, new signs and tree thinning operations that had some locals fearing the heavy machinery would show up next. It didn't, and won't anytime soon, Landguth said.

But the community angst prompted him to show up at the Black Hawk Pizza Hut last month for a public meeting on the company's plans. Right now, there aren't any for North Black Hawk Unit, beyond what's been done so far, Landguth said.

But that will change, someday. The new fences and signs announce that silently along Peaceful Pines Road as it winds up through appropriately peaceful ponderosa pine forest to the Woodland Hills development. That's where Love, her daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren live, at the end of Eagle Lane, in a home they built eight years ago.

Love, a retired school administrator, said the appearance of the fences and signs and tree-removal crews shook her faith in the future. She presumed mining crews would follow immediately. Since they didn't, she and other residents have relaxed, but just a bit.

"We're concerned, but not as concerned as we were when they started cutting the trees," Love said. "We thought, 'OK, here they go.' But then, nothing happened. So our concern now is not for the immediate, but what's coming in the future."

What is coming? That's a tough question, even for Landguth, who can't provide a timetable for mining in the North Black Hawk Unit.

"It's hard for me to tell you exactly," he said. "We do have a five-year plan, and right now, it's not on that. Most of our mining is still south of Boxelder Creek. We're permitted (in the north unit), but it's not on our plan now."

Landguth said the new fences and signs are part of the company's effort to comply with security measures required by federal mine regulations. And the tree removal was for protection against wildfires, he said.

After years of drought and tinder-dry conditions, plus scary lightning strikes last year, the company decided to thin the trees on the land and create fire breaks, Landguth said.

"It wasn't cutting to mine," he said.

In clarifying during the public meeting that the north unit isn't on the five-year mining plan, Landguth also admitted that plans can change, depending on the demand for limestone and related products and the company needs. Lien & Sons intends to mine in the Black Hawk area for "up to three generations," or 75 to 100 years, he said.

The North Black Hawk Unit could come into play at any time. The company's mining license for that area, issued through the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources, has already gone through a public notice-comment period. So mining could move to other locations with just a few days' notice to the state, largely as a courtesy.

But Landguth said Pete Lien & Sons doesn't typically "spot mine," but prefers to follow a contiguous plan, reclaiming as it goes. It also works to cause as little community disruption as possible along the way, he said.

That includes building earthen berms and creating buffer zones around the active mine, using smaller explosive blasts to reduce noise and ground vibrations and reclaiming mined land as quickly as possible.

The company also controls dust by moving most limestone from the open pit to the processing area on two miles of conveyor, which costs $500 a foot. That means less truck traffic, cutting dust production and reducing noise, Landguth said.

"We do everything we can to minimize our impact," he said. "Pete Lien & Sons has been a strong company and a strong community supporter since we've been here (in 1944). We're family owned. We provide a lot of jobs. And we plan to be a part of the community for a long time."

The company is most likely to work its way north and west from the existing open pit south of Boxelder Creek and west of Sturgis Road. Which means Love and her neighbors will likely have years to prepare for an up-close-and personal look at limestone mining.

As Love and others wait for that future to arrive, they worry about the effect on the environment and their life. Love asks why it can't happen elsewhere.

"They've got 77,000 square miles of land in South Dakota," she said. "Why here?"

The answers are both practical and geological. Lien owns the property and has for some time. It's close to the headquarters and processing plants. And it contains rich, 20-foot-thick seams of high-quality limestone not found everywhere. Limestone is valuable product used for a variety of purposes - from road-construction material and chicken feed to purifying water and cleaning smoke-stack gases.

Valuable products and mitigation efforts aside, residents up in the hills above Black Hawk still fret over the potential damage to aesthetics and property values. And because of the heavy machinery and explosives involved in limestone mining, they even worry about the structural integrity of area homes.

"What's it going to do to our homes, to our foundations?" area resident Sharon Wilson said. "What will the vibrations of that mining mean?"

Wilson also worries about the impacts of mining on Peaceful Pines Road, including safety hazards to residents and damages to the road itself.

"How are they going to mess up our road?" she said.

Landguth said Peaceful Pines Road is unlikely to see much Lien & Sons truck traffic.

"Peaceful Pines isn't a haul road. It isn't built for it," he said. "We prefer to use the conveyor, anyway."

That helps control dust and reduce truck travel and noise, Landguth said. The company also has joined other mining operations in the area, including Hills Materials and the GCC Dacotah Cement plant, in dust-control efforts that have helped the city improve air quality standards enough in recent years to meet federal standards.

"All the industry out there has done a pretty good job of controlling fugitive emissions," DENR air-quality engineer Brian Gustafson of Pierre said. The state monitors air quality in the northwest part of Rapid City and Black Hawk with monitors near South Canyon Baptist Church and at Black Hawk Elementary School.

Both have confirmed years of acceptable levels of fine particulate matter, according to air-quality standards. The Black Hawk school monitor has shown attainment since it was opened in 2001, Gustafson said.

Which doesn't mean there's no dust or that mining operations aren't disruptive to lifestyles or damaging to nearby property values. Although the surface mines must be restored when mining ends, DENR mining engineer Eric Holm of Pierre said the areas will never be returned to their original state.

"They have to follow reclamation guidelines for things like re-vegetation and grading, to try to get back as close as they can to the original contours," Holm said. "But when you remove however many feet of limestone, the surface will be a little lower. The topography will be a little different."

So will the lifestyle of those living nearby. Wilson said she knew that Pete Lien & Sons had land along Peaceful Pines Road. And she has wondered about it for years.

"Eight or nine years ago, I called the company and asked about mining on that property," Wilson said. "And I was told I wouldn't have to worry about it, not in my lifetime."

But when the signs went up and some of the trees came down, Wilson and others figured mining would soon follow.

"That's when the worry really started," she said.

The worry has become a daily, nagging part of Joan Love's life, a feeling of dread that settles in sometimes as she gazes at the woods outside her dream home. She tries to appreciate the value of the mining operation, the jobs and taxes it provides and the company's right as a landowner to use private property as permitted by the state.

But she can't help but wish Pete Lien & Sons would take its mine plans somewhere else.

"They're part of the community, and they support our economy. I understand that," Love said. "But I don't want them next to me."

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