Six times as popular in the business press as it was in 2002; about one in 40 press releases claim it. It’s taking over "honesty" and "integrity," maybe because you can claim transparency without any suggestion you’re doing something that improves anyone’s life.
It’s hardly surprising, therefore, that Aggregate Industries claims:
And why wouldn’t it? Any company which has the capacity to harm the quality of life of the communities in which it operates, needs to at least claim it’s acting in a transparent manner, if it’s to secure trust, legitimacy and a social licence to operate – because, as anyone who taps into Google will find, "transparency is the currency of trust", "transparency breeds legitimacy", etc.
In 2012, AI told local people in East Devon it was going to be 'open and transparent' in its plans to quarry Straitgate Farm; 'we have nothing to hide' – glasnost had arrived!
In order to prove this, the company was keen to share groundwater monitoring data with us, from across Straitgate and the surrounding area, in an effort to demonstrate everything was going to be done above board, that people’s drinking water was safe. And to give AI credit, for the last 5 years the company has indeed shared groundwater levels with us from boreholes across the site; daily levels from each borehole, supplied quarterly; boreholes that now total 18 in number; data not routinely seen by either the Environment Agency or DCC.
Of course, it’s easier to stomach openness and transparency when things are going to plan. It’s more difficult when they’re not. Indeed, the last set of data undermined predictions of the maximum winter water table made by AI’s consultants – predictions AI had used as the base of the quarry, predictions AI had used to determine the infiltration zones to mitigate for flooding; we posted about all this in June:
But it wasn’t just the recent data:
And in actual fact, plans from 1967 had reflected the same problem.
The proposed quarry base – the maximum winter water table – will have to be re-guesstimated to a higher level, to reflect higher groundwater levels in four locations; and the infiltration zones will have to be moved to reflect the fact that groundwater in these areas is recorded less than 0.5m below ground level. Less material will therefore be available. We have argued that plans should be redrawn before determination; the EA has bizarrely argued that afterwards is fine, "before operation of the quarry begins".
It’s all a giant embarrassing mess, but transparency has at least helped get closer to the truth. Where would we have been now without it?
But it’s all getting a bit much for AI; the company has had enough of openness and transparency. Last week, it was made clear that full access to the borehole data will no longer be forthcoming, and the data will therefore no longer be open to public scrutiny.
The implication, of course, is that the company now has something to hide.
We have not seen groundwater levels beyond 26 April of this year – except for one borehole. On that date, water levels in a number of other boreholes were at very high levels. Did they go higher? The one borehole, for which we do still have entitlement to the data, recorded its seasonal maximum after 26 April.
Denying public scrutiny of simple groundwater levels will obviously not inspire confidence from those households reliant on the area for their drinking water. Who’s to know whether groundwater levels go even higher this year, next year, or the year after?
We obviously can’t trust AI to flag up water problems in the future, given the company has had so many problems complying with a Section 106 to disclose groundwater levels at nearby Blackhill – where reports that were meant to be submitted annually were years late or non-existent.
And we can’t trust AI’s consultants – who bandy around meaningless words like confidence and conservatism and then get it all so monumentally wrong. Who’s going to trust them when they’ve been so reluctant to talk about tolerances: the error in +/- m to which the maximum water table has been guesstimated. Readers will remember that expert hydrogeologist Dr Rutter warned that at Straitgate:
The steep hydraulic gradient combined with limited monitoring, in my opinion, is likely to result in errors in the actual depth to maximum groundwater across the site.
We asked AI to comment on why it now thinks that the data, for groundwater supplying drinking water to over 100 people, is best kept beyond public scrutiny. It was a chance for AI to allay local concerns. It was a chance to explain why it’s best that the community is kept in the dark before the application is determined. Here is the company's response:
The change in the sharing of data has come about following a review of our practice in this area and is now in-line with company policy.
Subject to the determination by DCC of the current planning application then it is likely, in the event of planning permission being granted, that there will be a planning condition / s106 obligation which requires AIUK to agree a Water Monitoring Plan (WMP). The WMP will detail a monitoring schedule to ensure the protection of water assets including private water supplies and a requirement to produce an annual Hydrometric Report. This Report will be submitted to DCC and the EA and will contain all the borehole monitoring data, so at this time it will be available for public scrutiny.
So, plainly not conducting business in a transparent manner, and yes, that's right, the same sort of Report we referred to above, the ones that AI submitted years late or not at all. Brilliant. That's bound to put people's minds at rest.
So the last remnant of transparency with this planning application has been thrown out the window. And with it, any trust that things will be done properly. And this is all about trust – when people’s drinking water supplies are at risk. As things stand, local people are looking at a quarry base to be decided after determination, behind closed doors, using groundwater levels that the public can’t be trusted to see before determination; anybody smell that stitch-up again?
