Holcim UK (formerly Aggregate Industries) doesn’t intend to deploy Straitgate’s "revolutionary" working scheme at Penslade.
For a scheme that allows more material to be recovered, isn’t that funny? How many aggregate companies would forgo another metre's depth of material given half a chance?
For the company’s new application for Penslade – where there are few people nearby wholly reliant on private water supplies:
One metre. It’s as clear and simple as that, and the Environment Agency has already said it has no objection to the application.
Oh, what a different story it has been for Straitgate Farm, where for 12 months back in 2015 the company wouldn’t even come clean that the base of mineral extraction has been set at 0m above maximum recorded groundwater levels – or at least an imprecise model of them – and that a "revolutionary" seasonal working scheme is to be deployed: As we posted at the time:
AI's seasonal working scheme has now been described as "revolutionary"; not by us, but by someone on the other side closely connected to all this.How exciting! Local people will be thrilled. Thrilled at the prospect of being part of an experiment, where their drinking water supplies are reliant on the success of this "revolutionary" scheme; a scheme that relies on groundwater levels falling over the summer months to allow AI to quarry down to the maximum water table level, rather than leaving the 1m unquarried buffer above the maximum water table typically employed to safeguard surrounding water supplies.
So, a 1m buffer is to be retained at Penslade to protect the water environment, whilst a 0m buffer is to be retained at Straitgate – where there are more than 100 people reliant on private water supplies, as well as farms and businesses.
No, it doesn’t make any sense to us either.
It’s a story we won’t dredge up again, although it has been covered in these posts from 2015 to 2018 for anybody at all interested:
