WHAT a good point the writer of the letter “It’s a quarry, that’s what quarries do” makes. It’s right that stone should come out of a quarry that has run successfully for many years. But unfortunately we are not just talking about one quarry or just about extracting stone.

There are now three quarry sites off Georges Lane, Horwich which are all operated by Armstrongs, a local firm well known for industrial waste recycling and disposal. All three quarries have permission to be either quarried for stone, ‘restored’ (land-filling the hole created by quarrying) or both. If all three sites are operated at the same time with the approved average of 320 HGVs per day there will be a quarry HGV using the busy Georges Lane / Chorley Old Road junction every two minutes. But an average of 320 HGVs means sometime less and sometimes more each day, plus there are no restrictions on when vehicles move or what route they take.

So on busy quarry days, and at peak times there will be queues of HGVs waiting to turn in and out of Georges Lane. There will also be a huge knock-on effect to what is already an appalling situation in the centre of Horwich and outside Horwich Parish Primary School.

I sincerely hope that the dire warnings made by many residents about road safety do not come back to haunt the planners at Bolton Council whose apparent indifference to this issue alarmed many of those at the Horwich Town Council meeting last week.

Clearly, three sites working at the same time causes much greater disruption than one site on its own. That’s why in planning it is referred to as cumulative impact and it is unlawful for planners to ignore this aspect of a development and how it may negatively impact people and the environment.

It therefore seems bizarre that the 240 daily HGVs recently approved for Pilkington Quarry extension in January was justified because the traffic currently operating from Montcliffe quarry would soon cease as the quarry was closing.

Just weeks later the same quarry operator announces their intention to extend the life of Montcliffe!

The final concern is the total lack of certainty about the long term plans for the three quarry sites. The quarry operators can apply for new planning permissions for the quarry sites at any time and have submitted no less than five in the last two years. We fear that they can use their financial muscle to gain more planning permissions which will eventually create the ‘very special circumstances’ required for any development in this greenbelt area.

Once you have three very large holes they could be used to ‘store’ timer or other waste of the type that currently towers above everything around their Chorley New Road site. Previous plans put forward by Armstrongs have shown an ‘industrial recycling facility’ in the base of Montcliffe Quarry 14 times bigger than their current Loco Works site!

I hope that people who are concerned about these issues will join our fight against the step by step move from legitimate quarry activity to unbridled and unjustified over-development in Greenbelt.

Marcus Simmons RAGE - Rivington Against Greenbelt Exploitation