Thursday 12 May 2016

Miscellaneous

‘It was surprising,’ he said. ‘They came down to talk to the village, and we thought they’d strike a conciliatory tone. But instead they just turned up with the message, “you’ve bought a home near a mine – now get used to it!”’
It’s not rocket science... the effective conservation of the species and habitats protected by the Nature Directives relies first and foremost on the proper implementation of these laws... that the impacts of proposed developments are properly assessed.
An East Sussex council has won a legal challenge to an inspector's decision to allow 103 homes after the High Court agreed that mitigation measures to reduce the scheme's impact on protected heathland could be inadequate.The site lay in the High Weald AONB and within seven kilometres of the Ashdown Forest special area of conservation (SAC) and special protection area (SPA). The main issue focused on whether it was possible to exclude the risk of likely significant effects on the SAC from nitrogen deposition caused by vehicle emissions from the development and, as the council argued, cumulatively with other development along the A26 road...
Residents have a right to expect that when recovery of minerals takes place, extraction should seek to be in harmony with infrastructure improvements and development in the area, it should minimise impact on local residents, and it should make enhancements to biodiversity on the land when the recovery is complete. CEMEX is committed to this approach. CEMEX believes residents deserve respect and have appointed SP Broadway to assist with community engagement.

[FM Conway's] efforts have enabled it to reduce the virgin aggregates and bitumen it uses in asphalt production by over 200,000 tonnes per year and divert construction waste from landfill. The initiative was launched to tackle the challenges thrown up by the geological scarcity of high polished stone value (PSV) aggregates.