What hope is there of Devon County Council and the Environment Agency being able to police Aggregate Industries’ complicated working scheme at Straitgate Farm – "untried anywhere else in the country"? What hope of stopping water supplies from being harmed when excavators are let loose? What hope of knowing what goes on, or what depths would be reached, behind closed bunding.
What hope? None at all.
In Yorkshire this month, Quarry firms criticise council for allowing "unregulated mineral extraction":
Two of the country’s leading building materials firms have accused local authority planners of allowing a large mineral extraction operation to continue unregulated.
It's not surprising. Planning conditions are broken all the time.
Recently, we have posted Even aggregate companies are pointing fingers at each other over planning failures, Quarry companies struggle to dig in the right direction, let alone to the nearest cm and What’s the chance that AI would stop digging when it gets to the water table?
Planning conditions are broken in Devon too, often by Aggregate Industries. We have posted Another AI quarry in Devon non-compliant with planning conditions, Would the S106 water monitoring plan for Straitgate be as successful as Blackhill’s?, and Fancy that: AI’s missing S106 water monitoring reports turn up days after last post. We have written:
If AI can't be bothered to fulfil its Blackhill obligations, what hope is there for Straitgate? What hope for people who lose their drinking water supplies? What hope for people whose supplies become contaminated? What hope for timely action, when the last three hydrological monitoring reports for Blackhill have either been submitted late or not at all, when surface flows haven't been measured since 2011?
