Quarry reduction no different

I’ve written a few times about Staffordshire County’s consultation on the way to deciding which of the 150million tonnes of industry quarrying proposals get the green light.

Bucks Head Farm, near to Hints and Weeford, is a massive proposal… one of the largest in the county. But it’s just got smaller. Originally it was a proposal by Cemex to extract about 25million tonnes over 26 years. In the last week, however, the company has reduced the proposal size to just 8million.

Good on the face of it? Well, not really in my view. Admittedly the change means that 30 or so houses are now well away from the quarry boundary but the big problem is still lorry numbers. The original proposal of 25million over 26 years would have meant about 900,000 tonnes a year being taken off site. That’s around 1800 lorry journeys to and from the quarry every week.

And that’s just the same as the revised proposal because although it’s down to 8million they’ve also reduced the number of years on site meaning they’d stick with 900,000 each year. That’s the same 1800 lorries each week. That would be appalling so I’m urging everyone in the affected area to keep up the pressure.

The key task politically is to reduce Staffordshire’s massive contribution to the West Midland Region’s quota. It’s about 64% which is far too high. The next few months will be crucial in trying to do that.

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