Save Burnet hosting public meeting on rock crusher status
The Save Burnet billboard along Texas 29. Save Burnet photo
A local grassroots activist group, Save Burnet, has been battling for two years against the progress of a proposed 715-acre rock quarry that would lie along Hoover Valley Road just outside of the city of Burnet. The group is hosting a public meeting on the status of the fight and what the future may hold.
The free public meeting will run 6-7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 15, at the AgriLife Extension Center, 607 N. Vandeveer Street in Burnet.
“We’re continuously making progress and we want people to not get discouraged,” Save Burnet founder Randy Printz told DailyTrib. “We’re not giving up. We’re keeping this fight going.”
Save Burnet’s meeting will feature updates on the current legislative status of house bills and policy that could impact the quarry’s progress. Guest speaker Andrea Sparks J.D. will also be on hand to offer insights into the processes dictating the progress of the quarry at the legal and state level. She is the director of government and strategic relations at Buckner International and former founding director of the Texas Governor’s Child Sex Trafficking Team.
Save Burnet has been meeting for years now, organizing an ongoing defense against the proposed 715-acre Asphalt Inc. rock quarry on Hoover Valley Road, about 6.5 miles southwest of Burnet. The quarry has drawn considerable community backlash due to its potential impacts on air quality, groundwater, and local traffic, and its close proximity to children’s summer camp Camp Longhorn, Longhorn Cavern State Park, and Inks Lake State Park, which are all within 3 miles of the proposed quarry site.
Asphalt Inc.’s rock quarry has been on the public radar since the summer of 2024, when hundreds of local residents gathered for an official protest at the Hill Country Fellowship church in Burnet.
Resistance remained steady as Asphalt Inc. pursued, and eventually acquired, an air quality permit from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in February 2025 and a water quality permit from the Lower Colorado River Authority in June 2025.
Now, one of the final steps remaining in the quarry’s path to approval is a groundwater-use permit from the Central Texas Groundwater Conservation District. As of this article’s publication, Asphalt Inc. has not filed its official application to acquire a permit, but they are in discussions with the district.