Construction crews this week begin work to demolish and remove a sprawling cement plant at a historic quarry in the hills west of Cupertino that has provided building materials for dams, highways, bridges and other projects across California since the 1930s, but in recent years encountered growing environmental violations and opposition from neighbors.
Workers will remove roughly 40 structures across 123 acres at the Permanente Quarry, a job that will take two years, according to officials at Heidelberg Materials North America, a German company with U.S. headquarters in Irving, Texas, that owns the site.
Planned for demolition are massive conveyor belts, silos, mills, warehouses, offices and even the huge cement kiln that heated rock to 2,700 degrees…