After the years of rancor, lawsuits, rumbling and anger and finger-pointing, it's a miracle that the city of Augusta has a new blasting ordinance that satisfies both pit owners and residents of a neighborhood long affected by gravel mining.

The city previously hewed to state regulations about blasting.

And those regulations, written largely to govern gravel mining in more rural areas, didn't adequately protect property owners in the more urban setting of Augusta, where homes were sited cheek-by-jowl with gravel quarries -- in some cases, within 500 feet of those quarries.

The most important part of the ordinance is that all those within a certain radius of the proposed quarrying and blasting (which can either be short-term for a construction project or longer-term for a gravel pit) must be notified that the blasting will occur.

The ordinance also sets reasonable limits on the blasting to prevent damage to homes and adjacent structures. That kind of notice allows property owners to monitor the effects of the blasting -- something that was hard to do under the state ordinance, which didn't have a stringent notification requirement.

The members of the Blasting Ordinance Committee -- neighborhood members, city officials and gravel miners -- are to be congratulated for their willingness to work together and produce this proposed ordinance.

We hope it is quickly approved by the Augusta City Council.