Aggregate Industries' planning application to quarry Straitgate Farm will enter yet another year. Last week the company agreed with Devon County Council to extend the date for determination to 31 March 2021.
It’s not the first extension. There have been others:
And so, this East Devon pantomime goes on. Will this application be extended ad infinitum, or will Devon County Council finally tell Aggregate Industries to shit or get off the pot?
What’s Aggregate Industries' excuse this time? We haven’t done our homework, Miss. We need more time to compile additional information, Miss.
Right. Of course. It’s what Aggregate Industries has spent the last decade doing, compiling additional information about quarrying Straitgate – much shown to be inadequate, with faults, omissions and lies.
Aggregate Industries began compiling back in 2011. A planning application was launched in 2015. The application was withdrawn. More information was compiled. In 2017 a revised application was lodged. Questions were raised. More compiling. In 2019, questions were still being raised about fundamental issues on sustainability, on drinking water sources and the cattle crossing conundrum; information that should have been compiled with the original application, information still outstanding.
Aggregate Industries now claims a few more months will do it. But what has it been doing in 2020? No one would claim this year has been easy, but the company did find the time and wherewithal to address planning applications at Marshbroadmoor, Hillhead and in the Dorset AONB, to name but three.
But let’s not forget the fundamental issue here: There is no need for any aggregate from Straitgate Farm. Aggregate Industries has millions of tonnes right next door to its processing plant at Hillhead. And whilst the company has been sitting on its hands this year, another operator has recently announced plans to flood the Devon market with massive amounts of cheap secondary aggregates.
And yet, Aggregate Industries continues to peddle its unsustainable CO2 intensive plans for Straitgate – with its 2.5 million mile haulage scheme – despite promises from cement giant parent LafargeHolcim that it really does want to do things differently now, that new priorities have been set, that sustainability sits at the top of the agenda, that – according to the company's Chief Sustainability Officer – "it is a cool club to be part of":
Yes, join us, it is a cool club to be part of!
— MagaliAnderson (@AndersonMagali_) October 23, 2020
Are we to believe all those claims? Or do we look at Aggregate Industries' ridiculous scheme and conclude it’s all "Bullshit"?
But of the ten companies that most dramatically increased their CO2 emissions over the last five years, four were Indian, two were Chinese, the others were Australian, Russian, and Korean. Swiss-based @LafargeHolcim, cement supplier to the world, came in at number two.
— Datamap (@datamapio) October 18, 2020
Meanwhile, in other news, Alarm as Arctic sea ice not yet freezing.
A historic event is ongoing in the #Arctic.
— Zack Labe (@ZLabe) October 23, 2020
We have to pay attention to these climate change indicators. pic.twitter.com/MH30qBau6s
