WESTBROOK – Just days before a case pitting Pike Industries against the city of Westbrook was to begin in court this week, the City Council voted to approve a revised settlement agreement intended to end the lawsuit.

The council’s final vote on the consent agreement – which would allow Pike to resume operating its controversial Spring Street quarry but with restrictions designed to protect neighboring homes and businesses – took place on Wednesday, Sept. 8. The vote was 4-2.

However, two businesses located near the quarry are continuing to oppose the agreement in court, hoping to persuade a judge not to accept it.

Also, a residential neighbor who had helped craft the agreement and endorsed it said this week that the document contains “sloppy legal language” that could allow Pike to operate without proper Department of Environmental oversight.

The neighbor, Tim Bachelder, spokesman for a group called Westbrook Residents for Environmental Safety & Trust, sent the city a letter asking that the City Council reconsider the agreement or that corrections be made in it.

After the council’s vote last week, the signed consent agreement was then whisked off to a judge in Maine Business and Consumer Court the following morning. According to Tony Buxton, lead attorney for Pike, Superior Court Chief Justice Thomas E. Humphrey then agreed to delay the trial on the case, which had been set for Monday, Sept. 13.

The motion to delay the trial was made by the city, Pike and Idexx Laboratories, a biotechnology firm located near the quarry in the Five Star Industrial Park. But the motion was opposed by two other neighboring businesses, Artel Inc. and Smiling Hill Farm. The farm and Artel and Idexx all are interveners in the lawsuit.

Artel, which makes instruments for precise measuring of liquids, and Smiling Hill Farm are concerned about the effect of blasting on their businesses.

Bill Dale, attorney for the city of Westbrook, said the judge set Sept. 20 as the date for the parties to file written arguments on their positions, and Sept. 24 for the filing in court of responses to those arguments.

The judge did not specify when he might hold a hearing on the issue. However, Buxton said, he expects that any hearing will take place in late September and that the judge would make a decision in early October on whether to accept the consent agreement.

“That’s what I would hope for,” Buxton said.

Humphrey two weeks ago had refused to extend the Sept. 13 start date of the trial, and had urged the parties in the case to reach an agreement.

The trial would be to decide whether Pike has a legal right to operate the quarry. The city has determined that quarrying there is illegal because Blue Rock, the company from which Pike bought the quarry in 2005, didn’t meet conditions of its 1968 quarry permit. But Pike filed suit, arguing that the city was unfair to deny it a right to operate now when it had knowingly allowed quarrying at the site for decades.

Humphrey had warned the parties that if the case went to trial, one side or the other would prevail. If Pike won, city officials have said, there would be no restrictions on its blasting and other operations at the quarry.

That is why the city hammered out a consent agreement this summer with Pike and Idexx. That agreement called for allowing Pike to operate the quarry but under such restrictions as limiting production blasts to eight times per year.

However, Artel and Smiling Hill Farm and a number of residents of nearby homes complained that they were shut out of negotiations.

So when the consent agreement came before the council on Aug. 30, the council voted unanimously to table the agreement and sent it back for further negotiations.

The council also directed the city to ask for a delay in the start of the trial. But when the judge denied the delay on Sept. 3, that launched a series of fast-paced negotiation meetings, which resulted in the revised consent agreement the council approved last week.

In that agreement, Pike agreed to a number of further concessions, including a promise to meet with residents who want to move and negotiate with them on a case-by-case basis about buying their houses at 2010 appraised values. Pike also agreed to limit the number of blasts required to relocate an access road, not to build an asphalt plant on either side of Spring Street and allow Department of Environmental Protection monitoring of the site.

But Artel and Smiling Hill and some residents argued that negotiations were too rushed and the agreement was flawed.

Mayor Colleen Hilton, who helped broker the agreement along with City Administrator Jerre Bryant, said that everyone had an opportunity to have a say in the agreement and that approving it was the city’s best option.

“This is best resolved locally and not in court,” Hilton said.

Bachelder, the spokesman for the residents’ environmental safety group, who sat in on negotiations and helped draft the agreement, said at the meeting that it wasn’t perfect but that residents could endorse it because it met a lot of their needs. “For the residents’ perspective,” he said, “we can support this agreement.”

However, during the meeting several corrections were made in the document. Dale, the city’s attorney, said it had been hastily typed up because negotiations finished shortly before the council meeting.

Bachelder, in a letter to the city dated Sept. 14, raised concerns about some language in paragraph 24 of the document because he said that it doesn’t properly ensure sufficient environmental health and safety oversight regarding Pike’s operations as the negotiators had intended.

Bachelder is seeking council reconsideration and/or revisions in the document.

Bryant said on Wednesday morning that the city is in the process of reviewing Bachelder’s letter.

“We certainly appreciate his input,” Bryant said. “He’s been very, very supportive and cooperative in this process and brought a lot of good issues to light. We’re reviewing his comments in the context of the entire agreement.”

In the council’s 4-2 vote on the consent agreement,

Councilor Victor Chau, who represents District 2, where the quarry is located, opposed the agreement, as did at-large Councilor John O’Hara.

Council President Brendan Rielly supported the agreement, as did councilors Michael Foley, Suzanne Joyce and Dotty Aube. Councilor Paul Emery did not attend the meeting.