Friday, 28 February 2020

Climate campaigners “highly likely” to challenge road schemes too


According to the BBC, plans for a £28.8bn roads programme could be challenged in the courts for breaching the UK's laws on climate change:
Stephen Joseph, a visiting professor at the University of Hertfordshire said: "It's highly likely that the government will face further legal challenges if it goes ahead with road spending without having properly considered the implications for net zero climate emissions."
Some authorities are already taking net zero emissions into account. The Welsh government recently scrapped a planned relief road round Newport, partly on environmental grounds. And North Somerset Council has halted the proposed expansion of Bristol Airport because it's not compatible with net zero emissions.
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Thursday, 27 February 2020

Climate campaigners win Heathrow expansion case

Today, the Court of Appeal ruled that the government's Heathrow's expansion decision was unlawful because it failed to consider the Paris climate agreement.


Friends of the Earth, one of the environmental groups that brought the case, said the ruling was "an absolutely ground-breaking result for climate justice":
This judgment has exciting wider implications for keeping climate change at the heart of all planning decisions.
It's time for developers and public authorities to be held to account when it comes to the climate impact of their damaging developments.
The court ruling is bad news for all businesses and investors in the carbon economy, who will have to factor in the increasing risks of legal challenges
As Lord Deben, the chair of the advisory Committee on Climate Change, put it: “The fact is, it is the law that we have to keep our emissions down.”





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Wednesday, 26 February 2020

‘With every flood, public anger over the climate crisis is surging’… and other news

Executives in polluting industries haven’t quite reached the nadir of bankers after the financial crash, cold-shouldered at school gates and berated in the street, but the more enlightened can see something similar coming if they’re not careful. When BP’s new chief executive, Bernard Looney, made his carbon neutral announcement, following a similar pledge from British Airways, one key factor cited was pressure from staff...
And if younger staff are making waves now, then the climate will be an even harder red line for the graduates these companies need to recruit in future. Two-thirds of American teens now think oil and gas companies create more problems in the world than they solve, according to a report from management consultants EY. Generation Z want to work for ethical companies that make them feel good about themselves, and increasingly see jobs that fuel climate change as morally suspect. Who wants to spend a first date plaintively explaining why working in Big Oil doesn’t make them a bad person?

Meanwhile...

Companies and their auditors will be more closely scrutinised over how they report the impact of climate change, under a new push by the accounting watchdog to provide investors with greater transparency.
Ezra Zahabi, financial regulatory partner at law firm Akin Gump, said the move should benefit investors. She said the review would help in "raising the standard of sustainability data reported by companies, which is critical in order to meaningfully direct capital to sustainable businesses".

Meanwhile...

The report by consultants Oliver Wyman, published on Friday, comes as pressure on the industry to accelerate efforts to help better allocate capital in the shift to a low-carbon economy ratchets up ahead of United Nations climate talks in November in Glasgow, Scotland.

Meanwhile...

In an alarming document sent to clients, they said that deaths, immigration and conflicts will soar as the planet heats and water supplies dry up. Famines will increase and species will be wiped out.
All this will have a devastating impact on economic growth and the stock market, the report's authors David Mackie and Jessica Murray said.
The impact of climate change has been massively underestimated, they said, adding: "Something will have to change at some point if the human race is going to survive."

Meanwhile...

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Gas-fired power plant plans for Newton Abbot unanimously refused

Following the Bristol Airport expansion plans thrown out over climate fears, last week another planning application was refused, again contrary to planning officers’ advice, again over climate fears.

Councillors unanimously voted to refuse the application on the grounds it doesn’t contribute towards carbon reduction targets and no information has been provided as to how it would minimise its carbon footprint.
Cllr Sally Morgan... "We unanimously voted to declare a climate emergency and this officer recommendation is the wrong one."
Fellow ward member Cllr Avril Kerswell added: "We need to embed the climate emergency declaration we have made into our decisions, but this goes against our targets."
Cllr John Nutley expressed his disappointment and said that he could not believe recommendation for approval from officers, saying: "This would be letting the people down after we declared a climate emergency to be carbon neutral by 2025."
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University of Tokyo researchers devise new way to recycle concrete


Anything we can do to reduce, reuse, recycle, is clearly to be welcomed.


Here's a development from Japan, that uses two waste streams to make something better:
Researchers at the Institute of Industrial Science, a part of The University of Tokyo, have developed a new procedure for recycling concrete with the addition of discarded wood. They found that the correct proportion of inputs can yield a new building material with a bending strength superior to that of the original concrete. This research may help drastically reduce construction costs, as well as slash carbon emissions.

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MP says quarry plans should be blocked

From time to time, people try to do big, horrible things to their local neighbourhood.
The big, horrible thing being done to us is to dig a 105-acre hole in the ground, spend years digging out sand and gravel, then fill it in again.
Of course, this could easily be about Aggregate Industries' plans for a 105 acre hole in East Devon. But in this case, it's about plans for another hole – at Lea Castle Farm, between Wolverley and Cookley in Worcestershire – and the words of the MP for Wyre Forest:
Whilst there are significant rules governing dust emissions from quarries, can the operators really guarantee that there will never be occasions of significant dust? And will residents be victims of noise pollution?
In a previous political career, I worked for some people whose lives had been blighted by the endless crash of heavy machinery extracting tonnes of gravel each day.They were miserable, especially in the summer, when they couldn’t enjoy their gardens.
Meanwhile, the roads around the site will be subject to heavy lorries, firstly bringing in plant and machinery, then taking away the extractions.
Whilst it may be fine by the standards of the county council highways department, the endless grind of being stuck behind a heavy, noisy, dirty lorry wears out the patience of locals.
So I am helping the local campaign group to stop this proposal, submitting my own thoughts on why it should be blocked, suggesting reasons why Lea Castle is a bad idea.

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Cumbria coal mine faces legal challenge

Environmental campaigners have this month been granted permission for a judicial review of the decision in 2019 by Cumbria County Council to allow the first deep coal mine to be built in decades. According to Local Government Lawyer:
Rowan Smith, solicitor at law firm Leigh Day, who is representing Keep Cumbrian Coal in the Hole, with Anna Dews and Carol Day from Leigh Day, said: "This legal action shines a light on how all local planning authorities should assess the climate change impacts of development of this nature, particularly with the backdrop of the UK Parliament declaring a climate emergency and the Government’s commitment to ensuring that the Net Zero target is reached by 2050."

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MPA launches lobby group to ‘promote the advantages of building in concrete’

Concrete: the most destructive material on Earth, and one we need to use less of, not more. To make concrete, you need cement. Cement is responsible for about 8% of the world's CO2 emissions – if the cement industry were a country, it would be the third largest emitter in the world.



The Mineral Products Association – the trade body representing Aggregate Industries and friends – wants us to have other ideas, and in a sign that perhaps the industry is beginning to feel the heat, has launched UK Concrete "to provide a voice for the concrete industry":
It is time for the features and benefits of concrete to be recognised and valued together with the commitments the industry is making to support the transition to a net zero carbon society by 2050. Part of our new role will be to highlight the progress the industry is already making to lower concrete's carbon footprint, through the development of materials that allow us to build faster and more cost effectively, and showcasing the benefits of using concrete for a sustainable built environment throughout the UK.
LafargeHolcim – parent to Aggregate Industries – is the largest cement company in the world. Despite commitments, LafargeHolcim’s gargantuan carbon footprint continues to rise – as readers will know. Hardly surprising then that LafargeHolcim was targeted last week by Extinction Rebellion in Paris.



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Friday, 21 February 2020

Climate discussions in boardrooms


Aggregate Industries’ boardroom has in the past made up some targets too. In 2006, Aggregate Industries had a clear message on climate change: "it’s happening and we have to take action now". In 2008, the company set a target to reduce CO2. Emissions increased. In 2012, the company set another target. Emissions increased. In 2015, the company admitted "process carbon emissions continue to rise and are 20% above the 2012 baseline."

The company now emits nearly 1.3 million tonnes of CO2 each year, more than 5 times the amount it emitted 20 years ago. Emissions are still increasing. As we've posted, Climate emergency? Not at Aggregate Industries. CO2 emissions increase again.

So much for targets.

Meanwhile spare a thought for the climate-related discussions in the boardroom of Aggregate Industries’ parent company in Paris, after the events orchestrated by Extinction Rebellion this week.

One can have the impression that the re-decoration of #Lafarge, Cemex and 20 trucks was improvised on #FinDeChantiers. In fact, the action respects a graphic charter and the artivism group @xrFrance worked a lot before the action: the logo = Lafarce

La farce? The joke.

If only it was. Despite the greenwash, and undoubtedly the targets, CO2 emissions from the world's largest cement company have relentlessly increased – 135 million tonnes in 2018, up from 131 million tonnes in 2017, up from 127 million tonnes in 2016; LafargeHolcim: Acting in a way that would "wipe out most life on the planet".
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Thursday, 20 February 2020

EA says ‘we are in uncharted territory’ – so why doesn't the MWWT reflect that?

New Met Office figures show that February could be Devon's wettest on record:
At the current rate, Devon is averaging 8.44mm of rain a day. If that continues throughout the month, that will bring the 2020 total to 244.8mm - a new record.
What bearing will this have on groundwater levels at Straitgate? Who knows? Certainly not the Environment Agency, Devon County Council or Joe Public. Aggregate Industries, "in-line with company policy", has put a stop to timely scrutiny of these figures. That's something that should make people nervous. What could it be wanting to hide?

According to DevonLive:
The last major washout in February came in 2014, when a massive 226.8mm fell.
The wettest February in Devon on record was 243.7mm in 1990.
Both of those years have a significance for Straitgate.

2014 was the year in which the groundwater levels recorded at Straitgate were used by Aggregate Industries to predict the maximum winter water table at the site – the MWWT, the base of any quarry.

1990 was the year in which groundwater was recorded 2.8m higher than this prediction, a level the EA argued was "difficult to judge its significance", but now concedes should be taken into account.

The EA’s endorsement of Aggregate Industries’ MWWT model is based on the Agency’s belief that groundwater levels recorded in 2014 – shortly after monitoring first started – were the highest ever, despite levels in some places being significantly higher in 1990 and 2018. Based on this belief, the EA is willing to write off the normally required unquarried buffer to protect drinking water supplies. This means there’s no margin for error, no margin for MWWT modelling inaccuracy, no margin for contamination, no margin for digger driver cock-up.

It turns out there is no margin for the past either. The EA is correct that 2014 was a wet year in the South West. However, according to the Met Office, 2012, 2000, 1994, 1960, 1924, 1903, 1882, 1877 were all wetter. Might the MWWT have been higher in any of those years? No allowance has been made for this.

Furthermore, there is no allowance in the MWWT for what climate change might bring. BGS says:
Climate change will increase temperatures and change rainfall across England, Scotland and Wales. In turn, this will modify patterns of river flow and groundwater recharge, affecting the availability of water and changing the aquatic environment.
What's going to happen to the winter water table at Straitgate, given that the Met Office forecast:
Of course, such increases in winter rainfall will – as we are already witnessing – have a devastating impact on many places. At least one person at the Environment Agency gets it:




Given that we are in "uncharted territory", given that winter rainfall could increase by up to 35%, given that groundwater recharge will be affected – why does none of this inform Aggregate Industries’ MWWT guesstimate? Why is there no allowance for the future?

Where will the maximum winter water table – the actual one, not the suggested one – be at Straitgate Farm in 50 years time, 100 years time? If Aggregate Industries did quarry to its idea of the MWWT – could the farm be left under water for months on end in the not too distant future?
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Wednesday, 19 February 2020

Extinction Rebellion targets LafargeHolcim

Last year Aggregate Industries was targeted by climate activists. Now it's the parent company's turn:



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Tuesday, 18 February 2020

Delayed again. FIVE YEARS ON, how much time does AI need?

Aggregate Industries has yet again failed to meet an agreed extension for determination of its planning application to quarry Straitgate Farm.

In December, Aggregate Industries and Devon County Council agreed the 9th extension for this current application to 31 March. This extension has now been missed, given that submission of further information would require at least 30 days of public consultation before the DMC meeting of 18 March.

Back in March 2015, Aggregate Industries held public exhibitions in support of its application, which went live 3 months later. That application was later withdrawn, and another submitted. Since the start, Aggregate Industries' planning applications have been beset by problems – aired to death over the years on this blog. Its current application comes with an extra price tag: a climate-busting nonsensical 2.5 million mile haulage scheme from quarry face to processing plant.

This was not what was envisaged by the Council when the site was earmarked for the Devon Minerals Plan in 2011. The site no longer accords with the thrust of that Plan, which says mineral development should be about:
minimising transportation by road and generation of greenhouse gases
Whilst Aggregate Industries' planning application hasn't moved very far in 5 years, the world has. We’ve had the EU referendum and Brexit, Trump in The White House and Johnson in No.10, Greta Thunberg and the climate strikes, the Australian wildfires and 20°C in Antarctica.

Five years on, Aggregate Industries still appears to be going nowhere. Here's where we could have put a funny gif, the sort we've used before, but let's share a video instead:



The question now is: How much more time can Aggregate Industries go on pretending progress is being made with its planning application for Straitgate Farm?

The Council might say that applications of this nature are complex, that these things take time. But let's not forget that Aggregate Industries started investigations in earnest at Straitgate in 2011, having drilled the area extensively in 1990, having already had one planning application turned down shortly after purchasing the site in 1965 – in part due to risk to water supplies, the ongoing concern today.

So you could say Aggregate Industries has had considerably longer than 5 years to get its ducks in a row. But perhaps all mineral companies have problems. Let's see what happens elsewhere.

The number of applications for new mineral resources submitted by the industry continues to be low. Anecdotal feedback from industry suggests this reflects the cumulative costs of obtaining access to land and securing the necessary permissions and permits, together with the underlying political and economic uncertainty.
But on the issue of the average time taken for determination:
The time required to get a sand and gravel application to determination once it has been submitted increased to 17 months in 2018 (compared to 10 months in 2017).
It has now been a staggering 57 months since Aggregate Industries' submitted its first application, which clearly indicates something's not right. Someone needs to say enough is enough.

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Monday, 17 February 2020

MP delivers petition against quarries being built ‘dangerously’ close to homes

More details in the Warwick Courier:
Mr Western pointed out that in other countries, there is a legally established minimum exclusion zone. For example, the regulations in Canada state a minimum of 600 metres.
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River Otter Beaver Trial

With the horrendous flooding in recent days, and the desperate need in the face of climate change for natural preventative measures to slow the flow of water downstream, what better time to learn about the results of the River Otter Beaver Trial:


A 5-year study of beavers on the River Otter in Devon has found they bring "measurable benefits to wildlife and people". Tony Juniper, chair of Natural England, said:
This is a massive step towards boosting the richness of wildlife around the River Otter, reducing pollution, mitigating flooding and making this landscape more resilient to climate change.

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Thursday, 13 February 2020

Another response from the EA – and a swipe at SAG

This week, there was more correspondence from the Environment Agency in relation to Aggregate Industries' planning application to quarry Straitgate Farm, this time in response to a planning lawyer saying the EA's position statement was ‘insufficient to enable DCC to determine Straitgate application lawfully’. The EA said it was all a mixup:
With regard to the position statement we previously sent you, there appears to be some confusion about what the document represents.
But there was no confusion when on 20 December 2019, in its response to Professor Brassington’s concerns, the EA wrote :
Thank you for your email (15 November 2019) and your patience while we have worked to bring together all the information needed to respond to you enquiry.
Please find attached a position statement regarding the proposed quarry at Straitgate Farm, Ottery St Mary. If you have any questions regarding the content of this document, please contact us at DCISEnquiries@environment-agency.gov.uk.
Thank you and goodbye. Ok, so there was no thank you, and no attempt to explain why the EA disagreed with Professor Brassington. This week, the EA had another go, regurgitating a lot of worn out arguments, disparaging the views of a Professor of Hydrogeology responsible for textbooks on the subject:


There’s little point in going over the same old ground here, save for one thing. The EA, the protector and guardian of our precious groundwater, says:
the boreholes making up our groundwater level network in the Straitgate area all show that 2013/14 groundwater levels were the highest on record (with some records going back to the late 1960s).
By coincidence, this was the very same time Aggregate Industries started groundwater monitoring at Straitgate Farm. That's right. What are the chances?

However, the EA relies upon the 2013/14 levels to underpin Aggregate Industries' model of the maximum water table – the MWWT, the base of any quarry – despite knowing that 1990 groundwater levels were 2.8m higher than the MWWT in one location, despite knowing that 2018 groundwater levels then exceeded the MWWT in four locations, despite knowing that stream flows from the site indicate higher groundwater levels in other years too.

The EA relies upon the 2013/14 levels to write off the need for an unquarried buffer, the sort typically employed elsewhere, despite knowing the above, and despite having no idea of the accuracy of Aggregate Industries' model.

For clarity, when the EA talks about the "Straitgate area", it means East Devon. One of the handful of boreholes the EA relies upon in the "Straitgate area" is Bussels No 7A, many miles away. Dr Rutter says "I don’t consider it relevant… this well is over 90m deep and unlikely to respond to recharge in the same way as the shallow groundwater." Prof Brassington agrees, saying "a competition between observation boreholes has little meaning" and instead bases his conclusions on stream flows originating directly from the site:
The only conclusion that can be drawn from this hydrograph is that the groundwater levels on the Straitgate Farm site would have been at a higher elevation than those in 2013/14 during the winters of 1976/77 and 2000/01.
The EA has at last grudgingly accepted that the elevated 1990 figure should now be taken into account – which puts groundwater 2.8m above Aggregate Industries’ guesstimate in one area – but then they take a swipe at us:
The 1990 groundwater level information that Straitgate Action Group previously provided to us was one spot reading with no provenance given. Professor Brassington’s report gave the provenance as: SJ Parkhouse, 1990, ‘Report on the reserves of pebble beds at Straitgate Farm near Rockbeare’. We requested this report from Aggregate Industries and agreed with Professor Brassington that the data within it should be used to update the grid.
But the allegation that we supplied "no provenance" is bunk. Not one, but three documents were attached to our email to the EA in June 2018, to provide provenance for the 1990 figure:
Attachments: Straitgate_Geology_Plan_a.pdf (667K), R0001 SJP Dec 1990 Report on reserves of Pebble Beds at Straitgate Farm (dragged).pdf (520K), R0001 Appendix 6 (dragged).pdf (557K)
In other words, not only the relevant data from the said report, but also a map from Aggregate Industries – annotated below – showing groundwater data from 1990. The EA would have had this map from at least 2012, when the Minerals Plan was being put together. If they had bothered to look, the EA could have seen for themselves that at SG1990/021, groundwater in June 1990 was just 1.3m below the ground surface – indicating no resource would be available around this location.

On the same day we sent the email to the EA, we also sent an email to DCC, and posted AI has ‘forgotten’ one 1990 borehole – that puts groundwater 2.8M ABOVE MWWT – the modelled maximum winter water table – writing:
This is clarified in "Report on the reserves of Pebble Beds at Straitgate Farm, near Rockbeare", supplied to us by AI some years ago; a report that was based on analysis of 24 boreholes. The full borehole logs show that on 12/6/90 the water level in borehole 21 was 1.26m below the surface.
Both links went directly to that provenance. On the same day, DCC wrote back:
I have already been in communication with the EA asking for them to address the issues in your recent blogs in their final comments to ensure that my Committee is aware of all the issues at Straitgate.
But if the EA is really looking for someone else to blame for any shortcomings, perhaps it should point the finger at Aggregate Industries and its merry band of consultants. Perhaps the EA should ask them why the 2.8m higher 1990 figure was not included in Aggregate Industries' model of the water table, why it didn’t inform extraction boundaries and infiltration areas, why it didn’t influence resource calculations.

Last month, the EA revised its conditions in relation to the Aggregate Industries' application. On the issue of the EA’s revised conditions still allow AI to dig below MWWT, the EA doesn’t care:
on annual update of the MWWT grid, we draw your attention to the following recommended condition:
Continuous (daily) monitoring of all site piezometers, and interpolation between them, shall be used to ensure, during working, that the base level to which the quarry is worked is no closer to the contemporaneous measured groundwater level than 1m.
We feel this sufficiently addresses this issue.
But of course it doesn’t address the issue. If groundwater levels surpass the MWWT – as they have before – so long as water levels recede during the summer by more than 1m, as they invariably do, the EA are effectively saying it’s fine to continue to quarry to the breached MWWT levels (i.e. below the level of the maximum water table) until such time that Aggregate Industries gets around to adjusting its model, maybe never judging by previous water reports.

Even the condition above isn’t clear. As someone pointed out: "Continuous (daily) monitoring" is not the same as "Continuous daily interpolation". Does the EA therefore mean "... quarry is worked no closer to the contemporaneous interpolated groundwater level than 1m"? Who knows? Perhaps not even the EA.

And while digger drivers try to work to contemporaneous interpolations, groundwater levels across the site can rise by up to "1m in 5 days". What an earth could go wrong?

The EA of course doesn’t want to trouble itself with knowing how any of this unorthodox untested untried seasonal scheme is going to work:
It is not for the Environment Agency to advise on the precise methods by which the operatives will work. DCC should agree this with the quarry operator.
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Bristol Airport expansion thrown out over climate fears

Against officer advice, North Somerset councillors have rejected plans to increase the capacity of Bristol Airport, concluding the scheme's negative impact on climate change outweighed the "narrower benefits to airport expansion".
Councillor John Ley-Morgan said: "How can we achieve our ambition for carbon neutrality by 2030 if we approve this decision?"
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Controversial plans for quarry extension near Pontypridd rejected


The planning committee for Rhondda Cynon Taf Council unanimously rejected plans to expand Craig yr Hesg Quarry, despite planning officers recommending approval.

The proposal for 10 million tonnes of pennant sandstone would have seen quarrying extended until 2050. The site had been earmarked in the Local Development Plan as a Preferred Area for mineral extraction. The proposal attracted objections from more than 400 people.

Quarry companies bang on about community relations. Let’s see how well Hanson's Craig yr Hesg Quarry – with its community web page – endeared itself to the local community.

Local schoolchildren voiced their opposition to the proposal:
The amount of dust that is coming from the quarry into our local area is harming our health. Air pollution is already at the world’s highest and you are contributing even more. Asthma is on the rise in schools in our local area. The noise from the quarry keeps local people awake. Would you like to be kept up all night from passing lorries and explosions early in the morning? Remember you are harming the environment and also harming us too. As a school, we took a vote and 150 children voted against the quarry. It isn’t just us disagreeing. It is the majority of our school. Remember you are harming the environment and also harming us too.
Councillors voiced their opposition too:
…the community had assurances previously which had been breached so why should this be any different? …whatever conditions are imposed won’t be kept as they “haven’t been in the past”…“We are told these things can be controlled but will they? It’s too big a risk to take.”…“We can’t ignore the voice of the child. “I am not persuaded that the dust from this activity will not create health problems in the future.”… 435 residents can’t be ignored… “if planning is about anything it is about people”…Wales has just declared a climate emergency and they need to be progressive in their thoughts.



EDIT 3.11.22
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Scotland’s A92 resurfaced with recycled asphalt stripped from same stretch of road

Another recent development in asphalt recycling – which not only reduces waste to landfill and carbon emissions, but also the need for unsustainable primary aggregates:
Breedon Group, in collaboration with Eurovia and BEAR Scotland on behalf of an investment made by Transport Scotland, have completed resurfacing works on part of the A92 trunk road at Ladybank using reprocessed asphalt stripped from the same stretch of road...The resulting product incorporates up to 85% recycled materials and reduces CO2 emissions by around 50%.
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Snail named after ‘fighter’ conservationist

Dr Whitten was a senior advisor with Fauna and Flora International – one of the world's oldest conservation groups. He documented biodiversity in Asia, before being killed in a cycling accident.


We posted in Charopa Lafargei and #BiodiversityDay how cement companies have form with biodiversity in Asia, how a Cement company blows up limestone hill and renders snail extinct:
No cement business has ever admitted the scale of the problem. They tout their biodiversity pages in their websites and sustainability reports with pictures of ducks and frogs and children enjoying the wetlands created from the hills they remove. They give and receive prizes for their restoration work – but do not acknowledge what is being lost.
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Monday, 10 February 2020

Alternative water supplies: 5 years on, where do things stand?


The Devon Minerals Plan says any proposal to quarry Straitgate Farm:
should include provision for alternative supply in the event of derogation of private water supplies resulting from mineral development.
The questions have always been: How would those alternatives be provided – to people, farms and livestock, wetland habitats in ancient woodlands, even a Grade I listed house and its mediaeval fishponds and tea rooms. How could they be deployed in a rapid manner, given many of the above are miles from a mains supply? How would the whole thing be policed? How could Aggregate Industries be relied upon – when it has stopped public scrutiny of Straitgate's groundwater data and has had a record of non-compliance with previous Section 106 agreements concerning water?

Of course, without knowing how, the Council is unable to properly assess Aggregate Industries’ scheme. As we posted in Alternative water supplies: EA’s remit is ‘objectives and outcomes, not solutions’, according to a specialist planning lawyer:
if there’s a problem which might be caused by the development, the LPA must know how that problem will be mitigated, and then assess such mitigation.
You would think all this would be even more important, given that Aggregate Industries’ scheme is, according to Professor Brassington, "untried anywhere else in the country" and "will not work in practice when the machine operators will be left to dig with little guidance."

So, what progress has been made on securing those details of how mitigation would be provided? What progress has been made since this email was sent by Devon County Council to Aggregate Industries’ consultants SLR back in 2015 in connection with the company’s first application to dig up the farm. The email concerns a number of matters including "Derogation or contamination of water supplies", for instance:
Please also note that those on private water supplies may not wish to be connected to the mains and may wish for a more natural supply from a new borehole or well. Additionally, the provision of a 30 year mains water supply may not be considered acceptable to those who currently enjoy free water. If a natural free source is lost then the responsibility for its replacement should be taken on in perpetuity.
What progress has been made in resolving DCC’s concerns, 5 years on?

Whilst it is now clear from Aggregate Industries’ Hydrogeological Assessment Appendix D Water Supply Survey just how many properties could be affected – how many people, how many farms, how many livestock, whether there’s any mains water nearby, etc etc – a number of these supplies have still to be monitored, Cadhay for example, and there is still no clear idea of how exactly alternatives water supplies would – in the real world – be provided.

You might have thought, given that we are now in 2020, and that email was written in 2015, that some of those issue might have been resolved by now – if they could be.

Any dispute between the parties on any matter arising under this agreement shall be referred to an Arbitrator for arbitration in accordance with the Arbitration Act 1996.
Any dispute between the parties on any technical matter arising under this agreement shall be referred to an Independent Expert in such matters, having not less than 15 years experience – details of appointment of Expert to be agreed.
An Independent Expert is somebody like Professor Brassington. It is not some body like Amec Foster Wheeler (now known as Wood) who has already been caught whitewashing Aggregate Industries’ water reports.

But all this opens another can of worms. Who wouldn’t think that Aggregate Industries, or its insurers, wouldn’t dispute that they were at fault – given the potential costs involved? And then where does that leave people, if the independent expert proves to be not so independent, and the setting for a Grade I listed house is "turned into a quagmire"?

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Friday, 7 February 2020

Drax legal case

ClientEarth, a campaign group which last year threatened more than 100 councils with legal action over their local plan climate policies, was last week granted permission to proceed with a High Court challenge against the UK government’s decision to approve plans for Europe’s largest gas plant.

In its planning application, Drax failed to explain how this emissions-intensive gas project squares with the UK’s carbon targets and its strategy for clean growth...
The Planning Inspectorate agreed with us and recommended the project be blocked. They ruled that the project’s climate impacts outweighed any benefits. This was the first time that the authority has recommended a major project be refused permission for its future climate impact...
Only this month David Attenborough warned governments to take more action to tackle global heating, pointing to the Australian bushfires as proof humanity’s moment of crisis has come.
ClientEarth is a charity that uses the power of the law to protect the planet and the people who live on it. We are lawyers and environmental experts who are fighting against climate change and to protect nature and the environment.
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Repurposing waste materials for the construction industry

Recycled waste materials must increasingly be used in construction if we are ever to reduce our reliance on primary virgin unsustainable resources, reduce the industry’s carbon footprint, and move towards a circular economy. Here are two developments heading in the right direction:


Forty million waste tyres are produced every year. John Biggs, Mayor of Tower Hamlets, said:
It’s great to see innovative solutions to repurposing waste that could otherwise go to landfill or incineration. We were one of the first councils to declare a climate emergency and we’re keen to explore all ideas that can reduce our impact on the environment. This product will provide a safe surface with less emissions and disruption during the laying process.
And here's something that found application on the M25:


Cemfree – concrete made using ground-granulated blast-furnace slag instead of cement – has a carbon footprint "77% lower than conventional mixes." Volumetric trucks allow material to be mixed on site in the quantities required.
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Words

LafargeHolcim – the parent company of Aggregate Industries – does like to talk.

The company claims "LafargeHolcim is at the forefront of efforts to mitigate climate change", but in 2018, its gross CO2 emissions increased to 135,000,000 tonnes, UP from 131,000,000 tonnes in 2017, UP from 127,000,000 tonnes in 2016. Total indirect CO2 emissions added another 30,000,000 tonnes.

But wait. What’s this? A breakthrough in science??


Mining corporations are aggressively and cynically marketing their destructive activity as a solution to the climate emergency.
The claims by LafargeHolcim's US CEO in the video above will surely come as a surprise to many – including the person who wrote this BBC article: The massive CO2 emitter you may not know about:
In 2016, world cement production generated around 2.2 billion tonnes of CO2 - equivalent to 8% of the global total.
But according to the claims in LafargeHolcim's video:
"We’ve done a lot of great research with MIT to show that concrete has lower CO2 intensity than any other building materials"
Wow. That’s quite a claim.

What does MIT say? According to this article from MIT – extolling the merits of engineered wood for construction – the CO2 intensity of timber products is "under 25 percent that of cement":
Comparing the economic and emissions impacts of replacing CO2-intensive building materials (e.g. steel and concrete) with lumber products in the U.S. under an economy-wide cap-and-trade policy consistent with the nation’s Paris Agreement GHG emissions reduction pledge, the study found that the CO2-intensity (tons of CO2 emissions per dollar of output) of lumber production is about 20 percent less than that of fabricated metal products, under 50 percent that of iron and steel, and under 25 percent that of cement.
So, goodness, who do you believe? A cement company desperate to sell as much of its polluting product as possible, despite the climate emergency, or one of the world’s top universities?

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Wednesday, 5 February 2020

Sales of sand and gravel tank in 2019

How do we know? The Mineral Products Association kindly tells us:


Is there a significant fall in sand and gravel sales here too? In Devon, we still don’t know what happened in 2018 – let alone 2019. Despite repeated requests by Devon County Council, one aggregates producer had still not supplied figures for 2018 by the first month of 2020.

The latest figures available for Devon are for 2017, contained in the Council’s 7th Local Aggregate Assessment. We have written about LAAs before. This document tells us:
1.2.3 The LAA will continue to be published annually to inform development and monitoring of Minerals/Local Plans, including recent sales and revisions to levels of reserves and the length of landbanks.
...operators can assist the programme for the production of a LAA by the timely return of survey forms (see Section 9). Meeting these deadlines is important to the overall aggregate planning process, to ensure information is up to date and accurate.
Section 9? Completed survey forms should be returned to mineral planning authorities by... "the end of March", not the following year.

Without timely, accurate sales figures of sand and gravel for the last two years, you might think, therefore, that it would be difficult for "the LAA... to inform development" – particularly mineral development, particularly when it comes to, say, determination of a planning application for a brand new sand and gravel quarry in East Devon.
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