For years campaigners have been fighting quarry operators MMC Mineral Processing Ltd and landowner Bleaklow Industries Ltd over extraction at Backdale Quarry at Longstone Edge.
They claim the operation is scarring the picturesque Peak District lands
cape.
Earlier this year the Peak District National Park Authority obtained a "stop" notice to halt operations at the site before to a public inquiry on the matter, which is due to resume next month.
The action was aimed at stopping limestone extraction at Backdale beyond the scope of the 1952 planning permission.
But a special meeting has been called for today to decide the authority's next course of action after it emerged the inquiry may have to be cancelled.
The special meeting at Bakewell Town Hall will consider the options if the planning inspectorate rules that the authority's enforcement notice at Backdale was null and void. If this were to happen, the inquiry – due to re-start at Calver Village Hall on April 4 following postponement last September – would be cancelled.
The uncertainty follows a High Court case involving a Welsh quarry where an enforcement notice was declared invalid. The planning inspectorate is now deciding whether the same ruling could apply to the Backdale case.
Meanwhile the authority is still making preparations for the inquiry.
It is hoped the planning inspectorate's decision will be known before the meeting at 10am today.
If the enforcement and stop notices still stand, then today's meeting will be cancelled and the public inquiry will go ahead.
However, the news has angered local campaigners.
Malcolm Wootton from Save Longstone Edge said: "It's an intriguing but not entirely satisfactory situation.
"It really is starting to look as though the planning system is not the correct route to try to re-interpret these old permissions.
"What's really required is for central government to seriously reconsider its real attitude to local environmental matters."
