We have – from as early as 2013 – questioned the level of mineral resource at Straitgate Farm, given the ever increasing maximum water table, beneath which Aggregate Industries is not permitted to dig.
Aggregate Industries’ application to quarry Straitgate Farm was eventually permitted by the Planning Inspectorate on the basis of:
Extraction of up to 1.5 million tonnes of as raised sand and gravel, restoration to agricultural land together with temporary change of use of a residential dwelling to a quarry office/welfare facility
Of course, there is not 1.5 million tonnes available – even Aggregate Industries admits that.
Whilst in 2011, the company claimed that for Straitgate Farm "a saleable tonnage of 3,450,000 tonnes has been proven for the proposed phase one extraction area, and 3,795,000 tonnes has been proven for the proposed phase two extraction area", Aggregate Industries now claims there is only 1.06 million tonnes of saleable aggregate.
This is less than the impossibly precise "saleable quantity of 1,659,780 tonnes of sand and gravel" Aggregate Industries claimed in 2015, less than the 1.2 million eventually revealed by the company for the Minerals Plan in 2016, even less than could be inferred from application documents in 2017.
It is a figure that will be reduced again by any upward revisions to the MWWT, and by any of the "unmapped local faulting":
At [nearby] Marshbroadmoor, the original planning application promised 1.1 million tonnes, but, due to 'geological faulting', no more than 200,000 tonnes ever came out.
Minerals Surveyors Wardell Armstrong, in evidence to the Competition Commission’s Aggregates Markets Investigation, claimed:
...no aggregates operator would consider (for example) trying to develop a sand and gravel deposit of less than one million tonnes. We have clients who have sites which have been turned down on this basis. The planning and development costs are considered too great on a per tonne basis.
Aggregate Industries must be desperate.
At least we can be thankful that the company's "calculations have been undertaken by Chartered Geologists".
Or can we? The following joke springs to mind:
There is a geologist, geophysicist, and a petroleum engineer in a room with their boss. The boss asks, "What’s 2 times 2?" The geologist thinks for a while says "well it’s probably more than 3 and less than 5". The geophysicist punches it into his calculator and answers that it’s 3.999999. The petroleum engineer gets up, locks the door, pulls the curtains, unplugs the phone and says, "What do you want it to be?"
And even this, from that fountain of wisdom Calvin & Hobbes:
Naturally, with or without a knowledge of math, Aggregate Industries’ business model of digging holes in the ground calls upon geologists, and last week the company put the call out for a new one:
The selected candidate will be instrumental in exploring, evaluating, and advising on the geologic aspects crucial to our extraction and production processes. This is a great opportunity for the new postholder to make their stamp within a team which has recently been heavily invested with technology.
Perhaps, heavily invested with technology, we can now expect more reliable estimations of mineral resources from Aggregate Industries. After all, the company’s last two quarries in East Devon produced significantly less than expected, and there’s every chance Straitgate, with all its issues, would too.
