Aggregate Industries provides first Straitgate update

Nearly three months have elapsed since Aggregate Industries was granted planning permission to quarry Straitgate Farm. 

As previously posted, the company must satisfy a number of pre-commencement conditions and obligations before any mineral extraction can start, which is not expected before 2025. 

Last month, we asked Aggregate Industries to provide monthly updates by email "to include what AI has done at or involving Straitgate over the previous month and what AI is planning for the following month and future dates." 

The company agreed, but warned "the next few months may be relatively quiet as we decide the way forward." 

Aggregate Industries' Planning Manager has this week provided the following update for March:

Further to my email of the 20th February I am just getting in touch with an update on where we are. 

As you are aware we met with some of the local PWS owners on the 8 March and we undertook to respond to the matters raised at that meeting. I am currently working on this response and I hope to be in a position to contact all PWS owners with our response in early April, most likely after Easter, but when I have a firm date I will let you know. 

On other matters we have also met with Devon rights of way to discuss the proposed additions to the rights of way network in the application. 

In the meantime if you have any queries by all means get in touch.

Aggregate Industries’ Moorcroft Quarry generates more concerns

Aggregate Industries' Moorcroft Quarry in Plymstock near Plymouth has not only been causing its neighbours concerns about dust and the removal of trees – as we posted here and here – but also about disturbing vibrations. 

A concerned resident wrote to SAG last week about this ongoing issue: 

I am a nearby resident of the quarry and for the last two years have been experiencing vibration in my house, particularly during the early hours which disturbs my sleep, sometimes 4 – 5 times a night. I have contacted the manager and the area supervisor who has passed it on to their consultant at [redacted]. I have been speaking to the consultant for at least a year, providing a diary and descriptions etc. I’m totally disillusioned with him as I feel he is only trying to protect Aggregate Industries and isn’t interested in solving my problem. 

I believe that the stronger vibrations, which I generally feel between 5 & 6 am, emanate from the asphalt plant which is approximately two hundred metres from my house. Whilst other lighter vibrations are maybe caused by a water management system/pump. 

I contacted my local council this year, they investigated but couldn’t detect any actually noise so claim they can’t do anymore. Apparently, vibration is not a statutory nuisance even though the Environmental Protection Act 1990 & Control of Pollution Act 1974 both state; Noise includes vibration. Also, Pollution Prevention and Control Act 1999 1999 CHAPTER 24 (a) “pollution” includes pollution caused by noise, heat or vibrations or any other kind of release of energy. 

I have lived here for 27 years and it’s only the last few years that I started experiencing the vibrations. I’m feeling so frustrated with the whole situation as it doesn’t seem to be resolvable as things stand... 

King regards, Steven Furse

Hanson’s Town Farm Quarry extension approved

Hanson’s planning application DCC/4326/2022 submitted last November – subject of this post – to extend working at Town Farm Quarry, near Burlescombe, to raise an estimated one million tonnes of sand and gravel from the Budleigh Salterton Pebble Beds – the same sand and gravel resource that underlies Straitgate Farm – has been approved under delegated powers by officers at Devon County Council. 

In contrast to Aggregate Industries' highly controversial scheme at Straitgate Farm, 11 neighbours were consulted around the Town Farm site, with "no objections received." 

Town Farm material will be processed at the nearby Whiteball Quarry "approximately 2.5km to the north" on the Somerset border – just 4 miles from Hillhead Quarry, where Straitgate material will be processed. Devon County Council officers: 

...considered that maintaining the production of sand and gravel from the Budleigh Salterton Pebble Beds at Town Farm minimises transportation distances to the main markets within Devon and adjoining areas, and therefore, the proposed variation of condition accords with Objective 1 (Spatial Strategy) of the Devon Minerals Plan 2011 – 2033.

Contrast this with the Straitgate decision, where the Planning Inspectors were of the view: 

The distance between Straitgate Farm and Hillhead Quarry is about 23 miles. It has not been demonstrated that there is any suitable and available location for processing the mineral closer to the site. Because there is no closer processing facility, the requirement to minimise travel distance would be met.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

As a major purchaser of such material, Devon County Council – having declared a climate emergency – will no doubt favour material with a lower carbon footprint over material with a gargantuan one.

Aggregate Industries’ Moorcroft Quarry in the news again

In 2021, we posted that Moorcroft Quarry in Plymstock, was yet another AI quarry in Devon failing to control dust emissions. This time it’s a story in the Plymouth Herald, by the paper’s crime reporter: 

Residents have been left furious with the owner of a quarry for hacking down dozens of 'healthy' full grown trees home to a range of wildlife - and claim the landscape has been 'left looking like a battle scene out of Apocalypse Now' https://t.co/tY4ZfdJVHn

— Plymouth Live (@Plymouth_Live) March 3, 2023

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the story, Aggregate Industries has clearly failed to effectively communicate its intentions to the local community. One angry resident told PlymouthLive: 

The trees along the border have been there for decades - they're really tall and lush in summer and create a natural curtain which muffles a lot of the noise from the quarry. There's a big operation just on the other side and they start work early and it can be really noisy sometimes, so the curtain of trees has been a real benefit to the street. 

But when we saw how many trees they were cutting down, we've been utterly appalled. It's an absolute haven for wildlife. At night you can hear owls hooting, I've seen rabbits and foxes and a few years ago I even saw a herd of deer racing along the top. You even see birds of prey on the upper branches. We all know there's a great big quarry on the other side, but for most of the year you can look at it an imagine it's the edge of a vast beautiful forest. 

They didn't even bother to let the residents know and it looks like they've gone berserk with chainsaws, chopping down perfectly healthy trees. Of course, they'll claim they're all sick or something, but if you look at Google Street View's images of it in May 2022 you can see the majority are perfectly healthy and lush. It's just vandalism - plain and simple. It's the absolute arrogance of these big firms to steam in and hack away at nature which is so galling.

The firm must restock the felled area before June 2029. Another angry resident said: 

We'll be watching very closely to see if they do what they've been told to, because they've left it looking like a battle scene out of Apocalypse Now. They've ripped the guts out of the woods and it looks bloody awful. It'll take decades to return to the lush state it was in before the chainsaws came and the wildlife may never return. 

Aggregate Industries once bragged about its community engagement around Moorcroft Quarry: 

No other quarry of our 87 across the UK needs to have active and effective community engagement more than Moorcroft.  

In our situation we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t listen to our neighbours. Community engagement is a long process of talking, listening and presenting a known face. Even if it’s bad news, we tell them because, if we don’t, they’ll just make up their own stories. 

Hollow words.

EDIT 13.3.23

 

Yet more trees being hacked down by @AggregateUK team at Moorcroft quarry... They obviously missed Attenborough last night saying we need businesses to help save nature... pic.twitter.com/twp9NLaJHY

— Carl Eve (@CarlEveCrime) March 13, 2023