Aggregate Industries began working its reserve at Houndaller, at Hillhead near Uffculme, earlier this year with mobile processing plant - see below; the same plant the company had in mind for Straitgate:
New mobile processing plant is to be installed in [Hillhead Quarry] and it is this plant which would be used to process the Straitgate minerals. 3.14
Houndaller has the same resource that's found at Straitgate: the Budleigh Salterton Pebble Beds. AI’s Reg22 response tells us that:
Extraction is currently taking place of c.4Mt of permitted sand and gravel reserves at Hillhead (Houndaller) Quarry. Permitted reserves of the sand rich sand and gravel deposit are expected to last over 10 years.
But from the piles and piles and piles of unprocessed pebbles - from this apparently sand rich deposit - stockpiled at the site after just a few months, it hardly looks like AI is short of gravel.
People will truly be at a loss to understand why Straitgate needs to be quarried, and hauled all the way to a site where mobile processing plant is seemingly unable to cope with pebbles larger than a few centimetres - a site that already has 4 MILLION TONNES of sand and gravel waiting to be processed.
What does Devon's newly adopted Minerals Plan say on this matter?
Policy M11 expresses a preference for the extension of an existing aggregates quarry to secure new resources rather than development of a new quarry, in recognition of the generally lower level of impacts on the local environment and communities and the benefits of utilising existing infrastructure. 5.3.7
And what about the 2.5 million mile haulage scheme to haul Straitgate material to Hillhead? M11 again:
