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Opponents dig in for one more legal battle in marathon war of the quarry
Most days of the week, it's possible to hear a low rumble from the lorries making their way to and from Backdale quarry in the heart of the Peak District.
It's a sound the park rangers and the area's ramblers have become used to, but in the last few years a potentially much greater racket has been building as conservation groups have locked horns with the company behind the quarrying.
The resulting war of words and seemingly endless legal wranglings have been costly in both time and money and neither side has been in the mood for compromise.
The stand-off boils down to an interpretation of a little piece of legislation granted in 1952. The Minerals Permission document was designed to clearly set out the landowner's rights and responsibilities in extracting minerals, namely fluorospa, from the Longstone Edge area. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have been quite clear enough.
According to the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England, the Friends of the Peak District and the Save Longstone Edge Group, landowner Bleaklow Industries Ltd has turned this once quiet corner of the park into an eyesore by illegally removing tonnes of limestone, alongside the fluorospa, used by the chemicals industry, and selling it on for a tidy profit.
Bleaklow Industries doesn't deny it has made money
from limestone. What it does refute is any illegal activity. Limestone has to be removed to get to the fluorospa and the company remains adamant its activities are in line with the original regulations which it says clearly state landowners can profit from any other minerals "which are won in the course of working or winning" the fluorospa.
That one sentence lies at the heart of arguments on both
sides and over the next 48 hours it will be the turn of Court of Appeal judges to decide its meaning in an appeal hearing which might just finally bring an end to a long-running and bitter battle.
"The original permissions were granted more than half a century ago at a time when minerals were largely extracted by hand by men with barrows and pick axes," says Andy Tickle of the CPRE's South Yorkshire and Peak District branch. "Times and technology has changed and the result is our countryside has become blighted by huge scars of rock and bare earth.
"The real fear is that as well as making no provision for backfilling or landscaping when specific operations come to an end, the permissions also cover huge tracts of land which are as yet untouched, but which if nothing is done could be subject to the same fate."
The campaigners claim a reasonable rate of extraction would be two parts of limestone to every one part of fluorospa. According to their own calculations, the actual ratio
has, in fact, been nearer to 93:1. They also claim the latest opencast quarrying techniques and improvements in
equipment now mean it takes just five men one month to remove up to 20,000 tonnes of aggregate.
"The Peak District is an iconic part of England's natural heritage and all we are seeking to do is safeguard its future," says Andy. "A mineral like fluorospa is bound up with the limestone. We accept that to get at it, it's necessary to remove a quantity of limestone, what we don't accept is how much.
"A report from the national park authority's own geological expert concluded that considerably more limestone has been removed than was necessary to extract the relatively low
volumes of fluorospa and waste from the workings has been deposited above ground level, which is another breach
of conditions.
"The permission doesn't run out until 2042 which is more than enough time to do significant and irrecoverable damage to the Peak District. It has been a long road to the Court of Appeal and we all want this situation to be resolved once and for all. It's not just about our own little piece of rural England, but it stands as a national test case of all that is wrong with quarrying in National Parks."
While the opponents to quarrying have amassed much support, they also know the courts don't reward hard work alone. Environmental groups first became concerned about the problem of Peak District quarrying in the late 1990s. At the end of a high profile campaign, RMC, who had leased the site with a view to expanding the quarry, walked away, but it
wasn't long before Bleaklow Industries found another operator. As MCC Ltd started work, the SLEG volunteers rallied again, but despite various enforcement notices bringing activity to a temporary halt, the campaigners suffered a major blow in March last year when the High Court ruled in favour of the landowner.
Campaigners have since pointed out the decision was at odds with similar rulings and fear if this week's appeal fails, it could open up quarrying in other areas.
"The site was already scarred by the earlier activities, but it has just got worse and worse," says Andy. "It seems to us to be directly against the spirit of all National Parks which exist to protect areas of natural beauty as well as safeguarding threatened species and habitats.
"The lorries coming in and out of the site create a lot of dust and silt on the roads and the long-term impact of quarrying remains to be seen.
"New quarries or extensions to existing sites have to prove they are sensitive to the surrounding environment or that there is no credible alternative. Sadly, where old permissions exist this is much more difficult to control, but we believe that the national need for limestone should not be served by sites within the Peak District when there are plentiful sites elsewhere."
Bleaklow Industries declined to comment on the background to the case, but the company has been considerably more vocal on its website.
Alongside advertisements for slaked lime putty and talk of its 25 years' specialist experience, the company has a dedicated section giving its take on the row.
Under the headline "Lies, damn lies and photomontages", they accuse campaigners of using misleading images to illustrate the extent and impact of the current quarry and point out evidence of mineral extraction at the site dates back to Roman times.
"These alarmist photo-montages attempt to raise the temperature even further," it says of a photograph of diggers it claims are on a site unaffected by the 1952 legislation. "It is not possible for anyone to make a rational appraisal based on these untruths... SLEG has spent the last nine years maintaining we have been working illegal. They have harangued the Peak Park into spending huge amounts of public money
trying, so far without success, to prove this.
"We have had the same QC throughout since 1997 and we have shown the authority his opinion of what permission means. That opinion has not changed. We say that permission contains no limitation as to
the depth of working, the quantities or proportions of the mineral worked."
The result of this week's hearing is expected to be known within the fortnight and for all parties involved a definitive ruling can't come soon enough.
Andy Tickle says: "Sadly, the Peak District has the misfortune to be rich in the kind of minerals which each year end up in motorway foundations, underneath airport runways
and fuelling the chemical industry in both this country and across Europe.
"We recognise the need for people to do business, but we also recognise a pressing need to ensure Britain's rural heritage is safeguarded for future generations."
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Tuesday 07 February 2012
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