For opponents, the project, planned for a major crossroads to supply John and Lawrence Silvi's ready-mix concrete business, raises too many questions.

Legal questions: Local ordinances bar quarrying on much of the Silvi brothers' 163 acres at Routes 73 and 663, which sits just south of 52 acres the archdiocese owns.

Safety questions: Those opposed wonder how building and maintaining the quarry, an area in which the Silvis have no experience, would affect traffic, noise levels, groundwater and the air

And questions of character: The Silvis pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiring to bribe a Teamsters official in New Jersey in 1991. A U.S. District Court judge in Newark sentenced each to two years probation and 80 days house-arrest, fined them a total of $10,000, and ordered them to submit financial records for examination, documents show. Former President Bill Clinton pardoned them last year.

Neither brother returned phone calls seeking comment.

"This is a multimillion-dollar project - two, three, four million - that we believe will be successful," said their attorney for the project, Stephen B. Harris. "If a law or two has to change along the way, consider that part of our cost." 

The land, part of which most recently hosted a medical-waste incinerator, sits among houses, trees and an autumn-colored quilt of farmland. School buses and farm equipment make up most of the area's rush-hour congestion.

Township code-enforcement officer Henry W. Clemmer denied the Silvis' March 23 application, filed under the company name Gibraltar Rock Inc. of Fairless Hills. In a letter dated April 2, he said that the land was not zoned for that use.

Gibraltar appealed, saying New Hanover's ordinance effectively disallowed quarrying anywhere in the township, a violation of the state Municipalities Planning Code.

Harris said he expected the zoning-appeal hearings, which began in May, to run through next spring.          

Robert L. Brant, the New Hanover solicitor arguing on the township's behalf before the Zoning Hearing Board, said that "this is not a garden-variety zoning challenge. This challenges the constitutionality of the township's law, making the repercussions severe if they win." 

"Not only would we have to accept the quarry, we would lose the entire section of our zoning code," he said. "That could open us up to new challenges."

The archdiocese sees the quarry as a threat to its investment and retained Philadelphia lawyer Andrew Levine to represent it at the hearings, said Catherine L. Rossi, archdiocese director of communications. 

"Not only would it devalue the land, which for us is simply a land-banking maneuver, it could harm the livelihood of the man who rents part of that land from the archdiocese and uses it as a working farm," she said.

Paradise Watch Dogs, a nonprofit environmental group in Upper Frederick Township that has joined the legal fight, estimates that water pollution from the quarry would reach the northern tip of the Green Lane Reservoir, about seven miles away. 

Harris said his experts disagreed: "We have hydrologists, hydrogeologists, et cetera to show that [those] conclusions about possible pollution are simply false."

Pollution questions aside, Brant said, noise and traffic from the quarry could disrupt the township of 7,369. 

John Silvi testified at zoning hearings in July that much of the estimated 500 tons of raw stone pulled daily from the proposed quarry would go by truck - up to 360 per 24 hours - to Silvi properties in Limerick, Fairless Hills and New Jersey. The company would process some into asphalt and ready-mix concrete on-site.

"By law, it doesn't belong here," Brant said. "We just have to see how strong a voice a small township has against big money."

Jacob Quinn Sanders' e-mail address is jsanders@phillynews.com