A friend in the know about a contested request for annexation of land from Ortonville Township to the City of Ortonville has shared intelligence that part of the annexation has been denied by an administrative law judge in the Office of Administrative Hearings. A denial for one the annexation petitions is indeed posted on the Muncipal Boundary Adjustment site.
The property had been permitted by Big Stone County for a large blast-and-smash granite quarry that would destroy some of Big Stone County's namesake big stones.
Learn more about the backstory here at the High Plains Reader.
After being approached by township residents and landowners concerned about property values, traffic, noise, water, dust and rare cacti, the Ortonville Board of Supervisors enacted a moratorium while they wrote land use ordinances. The moratorium was recently extend for a year.
In response the landowner, who had agreed to let his land be mined, divided his property into smallers parcels that touched on the city limits; the relatives then petitioned to have the parcels annexed into the city.
More about what this decision will mean to the project as additional information becomes available.
Photo: These granite outcrops in the Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge are near the site of the contested annexation.
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