Bob Hopper had finally heard enough.

“I’m sorry, but I’m a little upset,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of pressure here tonight to do something that we’re probably going to do anyway. Obviously, there’s a benefit to the Hoosier Heartland, but we’re not holding up the Hoosier Heartland.”

Toward the end of a 90-minute meeting Monday evening, Hopper and four other members of the Cass County Board of Zoning Appeals voted unanimously to approve a borrow pit proposed by Gradex Inc. on land owned by Carl and Evelyn Amoss near Ind. 25 and 400 West.

Before the vote, board members listened as a parade of people stood up to plead for approval of the application and thus clear the way for the final leg of a proposed four-lane highway stretching from Lake Erie to Lafayette.

Among those speaking was Dave Arnold, president of the county commissioners, who noted that he lived within 2 1/2 miles of the proposed site.

“The Hoosier Heartland is important to Cass County and Logansport,” he said. “We need to approve this and move forward to the future of Cass County.

Nolan “Skip” Kuker, president of the Logansport-Cass County Economic Development Foundation, also weighed in.

“The Hoosier Heartland is a huge, huge issue for our community,” he said.

So did Brian Shafer, president of the Logansport-Cass County Chamber of Commerce.

“We ask that you use common sense and approve this application,” he said. “Businesses in Cass County are depending on construction of this highway.”

Jim Sailors, another member of the board of commissioners, chastised the board for putting the interests of one or two neighbors ahead of the interests of entire community. He noted that some had expressed concerns about children being endangered by the resulting pond, but he said there were far greater dangers.

“Go out and talk to the people of Clymers because I did, and they’re not concerned about it,” Sailors said.

But it was a comment by Commissioner Gene Powlen that finally set Hopper off.

“I commend our contractor for trying to find material close to the project to try to save taxpayers money,” Powlen said.

Hopper interrupted.

“Do you think that will come off the price of the project?” he asked.

Hopper suggested that the proximity of fill dirt would more likely influence the contractor’s profit than the price of the project.

“Can you guarantee that it will come off the price?” he asked.

“I can’t guarantee anything,” Powlen responded.

Hopper voiced frustration that the board was taking heat for holding up the project.

“We asked them at last month’s meeting to do two things,” he said. “We wanted them to provide a bond and build a fence around the property.”

The company refused, he said, and the board rejected the application.

“If they had agreed, we would have approved this a month ago,” he said.

Tod Groff, a Logansport attorney representing Gradex, defended the original application, saying different borrow pits had different needs. Some projects require a fence, he said, and some do not. Some communities insist on a bond, he said, and others don’t.

“You’re doing exactly what you should be doing,” he told the board. “You told us your concerns, and we came back and fixed it.”

The vote did not come without opposition.

Elizabeth Justice, who owns property south of the proposed pit, turned out for the meeting to again voice her objection. She applauded the changes to the application, but she said they were inadequate.

“While anything done to make the borrow pit safer is welcome,” she said, “the project is still dangerous.”

She said it would pose a threat to nearby children, that it would draw chemicals from nearby farm fields and that it might even become a dump site for worn out appliances, old car parts and even batteries.

“Gradex will build this and leave,” she said. “They won’t be watching to see what happens to it after they’re gone.”

Groff denied that.

“This is not just a we-build-it-and-run-away situation,” he said. “Gradex has been building projects like this for years, and they’ve never run away from one yet.”

Justice argued that the Indiana Department of Transportation had rules against building a borrow pit so close to neighboring property owners, but Groff pointed out that the state had waived that restriction in this case, and Arin Shaver, the county’s assistant planning director, pointed out that state requirements were not relevant to the board’s deliberations.

“You should be looking at county requirements,” she told the board. “If they want to enforce state requirements, they should take their case to the state.”

In the end, Justice simply argued that the borrow pit should be taken somewhere else.

“There are a lot of other places that are not a quarter mile from Clymers,” she said. “Putting the pit in this location does not make sense. It’s not safe.”

There was some dispute about whether the project fell under the board’s jurisdiction. Planning department staffers said they had taken a second look at the applicable state law and had determined that a borrow pit the board approved last month actually fell outside the board’s jurisdiction.

That project, at the northwest corner of 600 West and 325 South, actually doesn’t have eight houses within a quarter mile, and thus, the board could not act on a revised application that appeared on Monday’s agenda.

The planning department ruled that the project on 400 West had just enough nearby houses to qualify. It acknowledged, though, that the ruling could be open to debate. Groff agreed.

“There’s a really good argument that this property is outside the statute,” he said. “If we wanted to be jerks about it, we could go ahead with the project and tell you to try to stop us.”

But that’s not the way the company does business, he said. It wanted to work with the board to come up with an acceptable project.

“This is a substantially different application than the one you had before you last month,” he said.

• Kelly Hawes is managing editor of the Pharos-Tribune. He can be reached at 574-732-5155 or kelly.hawes@pharostribune.com.