With AI claiming a resource of 1.2 million tonnes at Straitgate, the resource that "assumes a working base that coincides with, and never drops below the maximum recorded winter water table", the resource backed up by all those references to PERC, one would have assumed that AI must have had a nod from the Environment Agency - that working down to the maximum recorded winter water table would be acceptable - because the last thing the EA publicly said on the matter was rather different.
It makes a difference, because 1m across an extraction area of 25.6ha equates to 410,000* tonnes net.
It makes a difference, because over 100 people rely on the area for their drinking water.
But guess what? Since the EA said that AI must stop quarrying 1m above the water table, since the 7 suits meeting in November, since AI’s minutes that claimed everybody else was at fault, since Amec's scope of additional work, since the drainage tests in February, no agreement has been either sought or secured by AI from the EA.
In fact, according to the EA, since the 7 suits meeting, there has been no communication with AI of any sort, and certainly no "Technical Note to summarise the whole hydrological position" 4.3. Nothing in fact to allow AI’s PERC-backed resource statement to assume "a working base that coincides with, and never drops below the maximum recorded winter water table"; it's all just wishful thinking.
Some might find the lack of dialogue with the EA strange. It's an issue that is central to the whole proposal, for a company that up until a few months ago was very much in a rush, for a company seemingly without a Plan B, for a company whose planning permission for processing at Blackhill on Woodbury Common expires in little more than 6 months time.
*(25.6ha x 10,000m2 x 1m x 2tonnes/m3 x 80% to exclude waste)
