A Wake County Superior Court judge on Wednesday sided with a wildlife coalition to prevent a mining corporation from expanding its operation at a state park in Wake County and give back nearly 14 acres of disputed land back to the state.

According to court documents, Judge Sean A. Cole ruled that Wake Stone, now Vulcan Materials, cannot expand its operations at Umstead State Park. The judge also ordered the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality to stop mining operations by 2031.

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The Umstead Coalition has been fighting the proposed quarry ever since the airport authority agreed to lease the land to Wake Stone in 2019.

In 2024, the Umstead Coalition said it discovered a surveying error nearly 50 years ago that wrongly included nearly 14 acres of parkland with an adjacent property purchased by the Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority.

The Umstead Coalition said a researcher discovered minutes of airport authority meetings in the summer of 1976 that proved the airport authority was aware of the discrepancy between the 70 acres the airport believed it was buying and the 83 acres it ended up with.

Umstead Park itself was purchased by the federal government as a national park in 1934 and then was given to the state in 1943. Under the terms of the deed, it cannot be sold.

The 14 contested acres are just south of what's known as the P.D. Davis Tract within Umstead. They make up the northern edge of the Oddfellows Tract, which was bought by the airport in 1976 and subsequently leased to Wake Stone, Inc., for a rock quarry.

According to court documents, Wake Stone contacted the Division of Energy, Mineral and Land Resources in 2018 to revise their permit to change it to “whichever is later” instead of “whichever is sooner.”

The word change, according to Cole, effectively changed a sunset clause in the contract, which would’ve required legislative approval to continue building, changing the state’s option in the land from “no later than 50 years to some undefined time in the future.”

“The Court specifically finds as a fact that anyone familiar with the English language will understand that ‘sooner’ and ‘ later’ are words which are opposites,” Cole wrote in part.

As part of the judge’s decision, Wake Stone was also ordered to give back the disputed land to the state.