A raft of plans have been provided for the latest consultation on Aggregate Industries' proposal to quarry Straitgate Farm.
These plans are supposed to demonstrate to Devon County Council that the proposal is workable. After all, if it can't be demonstrated on paper, what chance is there when the diggers arrive?
The problem is that these plans give no indication of how all the various elements – north-south bunding to stop major flooding events, gradient parallel bunds to maintain catchment flows, infiltration areas to maintain groundwater recharge, livestock tracks to maintain farming operations, hedge standoffs to allow for protection and maintenance of hedges, for example – could all co-exist together.
Has anybody checked to see that they could? It doesn’t look like it.
Take the bunding that’s supposed to stop flooding. Aggregate Industries claims:
2.18.6 ...the bund should be designed to manage exceedance flows in excess of the design event.
But overlaying SF/5-1C with Fig A2.1, what do we find? That the area set aside for bunding is taken up by a causeway to the loading area.
Take the Farm Management Plan, supplied at the Council’s request. Aggregate Industries claims:
Positions of new 3.5metre wide gateways, or potentially new gateways, that are currently anticipated to enable cattle to move between the farmyard/milking parlour and the remaining land on the holding are also shown. Proposed surfaced access tracks between 3-3.5metres wide providing this linkage are also indicated on the plan.
But clearly the provider of that plan had not checked the other drawings, because by overlaying this plan over other working drawings, here and here, what do we find? That the area set aside for 3.5m wide farm tracks is taken up with advance planting and piles of overburden or top soil. That there are livestock tracks along the sheer face of a quarry and a new gate to nowhere. And that three fields that would need to be farmed have no indicated means of access, so even more hedgerow would need to be removed.
