TEMECULA - More than 200 residents turned out Wednesday night to hear mostly negatives on a gravel quarry that a mining company seeks to build in the hills south of the city.

The two-hour session at the Temeku Hills Golf & Country Club's clubhouse had been organized by that community's homeowners association as a chance for residents to ask Granite Construction Co. representatives and quarry opponents about the proposed 310-acre quarry.

But Granite representatives said Monday they would not participate because they expected Save Our Southwest Hills, the group leading opposition to the quarry, to hijack the session. The homeowners group then withdrew its sponsorship.

So the anti-quarry group paid to put on the event and its leaders got the stage for two hours. An outside speaker they had arranged to participate said quarry opponents should go on the offensive and not look back.

"If you play by their rules, you lose," Penny Newman, who organized her Mira Loma community against toxic pollution seven years ago, told the crowd. "You have the perfect right to do whatever you need to do to make sure this doesn't happen to your community."

Southwest Hills members, whose orange shirts speckled the audience, have argued that the quarry would release silica dust into winds blowing northeast through Rainbow Pass into the Temecula area. Granite Construction officials have said nothing of the sort will happen since the rock will be crushed into gravel and sand inside sealed metal structures.

Opponents also worry of possible noise from the blasting that will loosen rock from the ground, a plateau that looms west of Interstate 15 at the San Diego County line. Granite disputes that, pointing out that surrounding homes would be shielded by a ring of hills, a planned earthen berm and more than a mile of distance.

Granite cancelled its participation after hearing that the Southwest Hills group would present several of its members to speak as experts on traffic and air quality, according to representatives of both Granite and the anti-quarry group.

"A chiropractor answering air-quality questions seems kind of ridiculous," Granite Construction spokeswoman Karie Reuther said.

Reuther said it would be irresponsible for her company to make speculative comments while an official environmental impact report is being researched and prepared. Officials with the Riverside County Planning Department, which has commissioned the report by a private engineering firm, said they expect its component studies to be completed over the course of August, September and October. They'll then review those studies as the engineers assemble them into a single coherent report.

Kathleen Hamilton, a leader of the Southwest Hills group, said her group's plans were fair, though she acknowledged that the session was initially intended to be a forum for Granite Construction.

Reuther said the association had invited the anti-quarry group to send a representative only later. Granite officials didn't protest that change, but they found out Monday that Save Our Southwest Hills had lined up three additional speakers. An official with the association declined to comment beyond saying that he regretted Granite's decision to withdraw.

"The homeowners association was trying to keep it as an objective meeting, but the SOS people kept pushing and pushing and pushing," Reuther said. "It seems like it changed from an informational meeting into a … fight-the-quarry meeting."

The scene Wednesday evening was the latest skirmish in a public-relations war that began to ratchet up last summer. Granite has given at least a dozen tours of the quarry site since then; Rahn, Hamilton and others opposed to the quarry have given roughly as many tours of the Santa Margarita Ecological Reserve, whose wildlife and pristine conditions they say a nearby quarry would disturb.

- Contact staff writer Chris Bagley at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2615, or cbagley@californian.com.