Latest news with #quarry
Telegraph
3 days ago
- Business
- Telegraph
Prisoners get a lie-in as quarry construction forced to start later
Prisoners have been guaranteed their weekend lie-in as a Lib Dem-led council approved quarry works, provided construction starts after 9am. Bosses at HMP Stoke Heath in Shropshire convinced Grundon Sand & Gravel to start work late on Saturdays so they don't disturb inmates' 'quality of life'. Prisoners at the category C jail are allowed to lie-in beyond 7.30am on a Saturday and governors were worried the noisy blasting work would disrupt their sleep. Shropshire council approved the plans after adjustments were made to the application, including limiting its operating hours. The prison had objected to the original proposals after the firm applied for permission to extend its quarry in Tern Hill, Market Drayton, Shropshire, last August. Cushman & Wakefield, on behalf of HM Prison & Probation Service (HMPPS) wrote: 'HMPPS have particular concerns regarding the proposed hours of working on Saturdays where operations are expected to take place from 7am – 1pm. 'From Monday to Friday, prisoners are woken up at 7.30am for activities at the establishment, which include the employment opportunities that some of the prisoners are involved in. 'On Saturdays, prisoners are permitted to sleep in beyond 7.30am. 'HMPPS are therefore concerned that prisoners are likely to experience some level of disruption to their sleep from the operations taking place on Saturdays from 7am, and this could potentially impact their amenity and quality of life.' Construction plans predict the extraction of about 1.2 million tonnes of sand and gravel from the site over a period of 15 years at a rate of around 80,000 tonnes each year. It also outlined plans to use the site as a solar farm while quarrying is underway, partly to provide power for the site, but also to supply electricity back to the grid. The proposal was put before Shropshire Council's northern planning committee this week, where councillors voted unanimously to grant planning permission. As a result of HMPPS concerns, the quarry will be unable to operate before 9am on Saturdays, with no operations taking place on Sunday. Approving the plan, the local planning officer said: 'The potential impacts on the local area, which includes an RAF facility, a young offenders institution and dwellings, can be mitigated and minimised to an acceptable level through site management controls which can be secured by planning conditions. 'There would be some impacts on the local area due to the nature of the proposal, such as from the visibility of the operation and additional traffic levels. 'However, it is considered that these would be mitigated to an acceptable level when balanced against the benefits of the proposal. 'These benefits include the creation of five full-time jobs directly, with a further six part-time indirect positions, a significant level of biodiversity net gain, and the provision of renewable energy from solar panels.'
Yahoo
12-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Outcry over plans to reopen quarry at beauty spot
Plans to extend the life of a dormant quarry in an official area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB) have caused an outcry. Tarmac Trading Ltd is seeking to use Burley Hill Quarry at Eryrys, Denbighshire, for another 15 years, with the site originally given planning permission between 1950 and 2021. It has prompted opposition from neighbouring councils, walking groups and residents amid concerns about noise, traffic and damage to the environment and tourism in an area known as the Clwydian Range and Dee Valley AONB. Planning officers have said if the quarry was refused permission, "reserves would remain unworked, and the minerals would be required to be acquired elsewhere". 'Chaos' worries over beauty spot cafe plan Instagram tourists urged to respect beauty spot Push for new national park on 75th birthday A decision on Tarmac Trading Ltd's plans to continue extracting 3.8m tonnes of limestone is due to be discussed on Wednesday after the debate was delayed twice by Denbighshire council's planning committee to allow further public consultation. Planning officers are recommending the committee grants the application permission. Opponents include the community councils of Llanferres, Llanarmon-yn-Ial and Nercwys as well as Mold Town Council, the AONB's joint advisory committee and Ramblers Cymru, while a local petition has collected in excess of 400 names. Members of the Senedd have also raised concerns, including Sam Rowland, Carolyn Thomas, Darren Millar, Llyr Gruffydd, Hannah Blythyn, and Mark Isherwood. "The quarry closed 20 years ago, and there has been a lot of change in the area since then with many new businesses, many of which rely on tourism to thrive," said Millar, the leader of the Welsh Conservatives in the Senedd who also represents Clwyd West. In a letter to the planning authority, the AONB said "reopening the quarry and extending its life for a further 15 years will have a significant adverse impact on local tranquillity through an increase in noise, heavy traffic, and a general increase in activity and disturbance associated with quarrying operations". But a 140-page planning report said there was "a demonstrable need for the mineral which would outweigh any temporary harm to the tranquillity of the AONB, which can be mitigated". "Whilst it is considered that there would be an impact on tranquillity, it would not undermine the natural beauty of the AONB, given the limited time and frequency of the proposed campaign events," it said. It added the proposed operations would be at a "lesser intensity with a reduced output level compared to that of when the site was operational pre-2005". Clwydian Range and Dee Valley AONB Denbighshire council planning committee
BBC News
12-07-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Outcry over plans to reopen Burley Hill Quarry at Eryrys beauty spot
Plans to extend the life of a dormant quarry in an official area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB) have caused an Trading Ltd is seeking to use Burley Hill Quarry at Eryrys, Denbighshire, for another 15 years, with the site originally given planning permission between 1950 and has prompted opposition from neighbouring councils, walking groups and residents amid concerns about noise, traffic and damage to the environment and tourism in an area known as the Clwydian Range and Dee Valley officers have said if the quarry was refused permission, "reserves would remain unworked, and the minerals would be required to be acquired elsewhere". A decision on Tarmac Trading Ltd's plans to continue extracting 3.8m tonnes of limestone is due to be discussed on Wednesday after the debate was delayed twice by Denbighshire council's planning committee to allow further public officers are recommending the committee grants the application include the community councils of Llanferres, Llanarmon-yn-Ial and Nercwys as well as Mold Town Council, the AONB's joint advisory committee and Ramblers Cymru, while a local petition has collected in excess of 400 of the Senedd have also raised concerns, including Sam Rowland, Carolyn Thomas, Darren Millar, Llyr Gruffydd, Hannah Blythyn, and Mark Isherwood."The quarry closed 20 years ago, and there has been a lot of change in the area since then with many new businesses, many of which rely on tourism to thrive," said Millar, the leader of the Welsh Conservatives in the Senedd who also represents Clwyd a letter to the planning authority, the AONB said "reopening the quarry and extending its life for a further 15 years will have a significant adverse impact on local tranquillity through an increase in noise, heavy traffic, and a general increase in activity and disturbance associated with quarrying operations".But a 140-page planning report said there was "a demonstrable need for the mineral which would outweigh any temporary harm to the tranquillity of the AONB, which can be mitigated"."Whilst it is considered that there would be an impact on tranquillity, it would not undermine the natural beauty of the AONB, given the limited time and frequency of the proposed campaign events," it added the proposed operations would be at a "lesser intensity with a reduced output level compared to that of when the site was operational pre-2005".
BBC News
04-07-2025
- Climate
- BBC News
Multiple crews called to derelict building fire in Matlock
Multiple crews are tackling a blaze at a derelict building in were called to a former quarry site in Dale Road in Matlock at 18:40 BST on Fire and Rescue Service (DFRS) said the blaze could "be seen several miles away due to its location".Anyone who can smell or see smoke from the fire is urged to keep their windows and doors shut. DFRS said seven fire engines, two water carriers and two aerial ladder platforms had been sent to the services are expected to remain there for "some considerable time", it added.
BBC News
04-07-2025
- BBC News
Is this the end for Easter Island's moai statues?
Easter Island's famous moai statues are crumbling into the sea, forcing locals to face urgent decisions about how best to protect their heritage. In an ancient quarry on top of a volcano on a remote Pacific island, half-finished figures hewn into the rock ignore Maria Tuki as she walks by. The rugged faces of these figures sport world-famous furrowed brows and sloping noses. This is the land of the moai, iconic human statues unique to Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island – an isolated island around the size of Washington DC situated 3,500km (2,170 miles) off the coast of Chile. Before my visit, I expected to see just a couple of these famous faces at designated tourist sites. But the sheer number of the moai is breathtaking; bits of them are strewn alongside roads, bordering the coast, and shouldering hills. Together, they form a real physical reminder of this land's ancient history. Centuries ago, Tuki's ancestors carved and chiselled many hundreds of monoliths like the ones here. Evidence of that activity is everywhere, both in the heavily worked quarry itself, where some still remain deeply embedded in the mountain, and in the surrounding land, where finished statues lie abandoned, forming paths to the island's edge. It is thought that teams of workers sometimes lost their grip while transporting the statues to the stone platforms dotted around the coast. At first glance, the imposing moai, with their stern expressions, seem hardy. But they are made from tuff, a volcanic rock largely composed of compressed ash. This type of stone is porous and unusually soft. The wind and rain do not treat it kindly. Up close, the aging visages of the moai are riddled with signs of erosion and staining. They are gradually wearing away to dust. Tuki, who works in Rapa Nui's tourism industry, is essentially watching these stunning figures slowly disappear. "My father told me that the moai would go back into the ocean one day," she says. Tuki's father, who died in 2020, was a famed contemporary moai sculptor. The original statues, mostly carved between 1100 and 1600AD, are increasingly the subject of conservation efforts, given that weathering – supercharged by climate change – threatens to destroy them. Community leaders in Rapa Nui are looking for ways to track and mitigate the damage, trying everything from chemical treatments to making 3D scans of the statues using drones before they are lost. All options are on the table as the community grapples with how to manage its rapidly changing heritage – from relocating them out of harm's way to allowing them to succumb to it, as some argue is part of the moai's lifecycle. There are roughly 1,000 statues on the island in various stages of completion, with about 200 perched on their final platforms, known as ahu. The majority of these platforms are positioned along the island's coast, staring silently out to sea. The moai were created by the first communities of Polynesian people living on the island to represent the likenesses of their ancestors and the family of chief Hotu Matu'a, who is thought to have first settled the island after canoeing to Rapa Nui from an island in East Polynesia. At some point in the late 18th and early 19th Century, the statues were all mysteriously toppled, likely because a new religious movement took hold on the island, or possibly because of some conflict – historians have yet to find definitive answers. Due to the formidable history etched in these huge stone statues, in 1995 the Rapa Nui National Park was listed as a Unesco World Heritage site. Still, the moai aren't perfect and pristine statues, shielded from their surroundings. In fact, they began deteriorating as soon as they were carved, according to the 1997 book Death of a Moai by historian Elena Charola. The tuff was stressed as it was chipped and pecked out of the quarry, chafed by ropes, then scratched and scraped on the long journey downhill, Charola writes. From the day they were erected, the sun, wind, rain and vagaries of temperature have also taken their toll on the moai. When moisture from sea spray evaporates, salt crystallises inside the soft volcanic tuff expands, causing the statue to flake or spall, creating hairline cracks and honeycomb-shaped cavities. I notice lichens growing on the surface of many of the statues, with the appearance of concentric rashes. Animals interfere with the moai, too. Horses and cattle scratch their itches on the monoliths while birds claw into the tuff and deposit toxic droppings, or guano, which erodes the material yet further. In 2020, a truck accidentally crashed into one of the faces. Crucially, though, weathering of the moai appears to have increased sharply during recent decades, Daniela Meza Marchant, lead conservator for the Ma'u Henua Indigenous community that runs the Rapa Nui National Park, has said. She noted that images and records from the past century show alteration has increased over the past 50 years compared to the previous 50. In fact, according to a 2016 Unesco report, the Rapa Nui's moai are among the heritage sites most affected by climate change worldwide. Over the last few decades, rainfall on Rapa Nui has decreased radically, becoming more sporadic but also more potent, pummelling the moai more aggressively than before. The island already has little tree coverage, but frequent droughts have dried up freshwater reserves and can boost the risk of wildfires. One wildfire in October 2022 charred and cracked some 80 moai in Rano Raraku, the volcanic crater that contains the famous quarry where many monoliths were carved. The resulting damage was "irreparable and with consequences beyond what you can see with your eyes", local authorities said at the time. Rising sea levels and increased extreme wave events are also eroding the island. This is one of the most imminent threats to the moai, the Unesco report states, as more than 90% of the standing monoliths are positioned along the coast. People have tried to save the moai before. Over two decades starting in the 1970s, American archaeologist William Mulloy carried out several restoration efforts on the island, re-erecting statues and reassembling fragmented platforms which had been toppled en masse in the early 1800s. In the 1990s, a site called Tongariki that had been swept away by a tsunami during the 1960s had its moai erected again by local archaeologists. More recently, in 2003 a Japanese-funded Unesco project waterproofed the Tongariki statues with a chemical agent designed to make the tuff more resistant to sea spray. However, the expensive and delicate treatment must be reapplied every five to 10 years, a burden on the few local resources available. Several other locations are pending this preventive intervention, according to local magazine moeVarua Rapa Nui. Some conservation efforts, though, have gone wrong. In 1986, researchers from the Senckenberg Natural History Museum in Germany made silicone moulds of the statues in an effort to make replicas, but inadvertently peeled off a surface layer of tuff from the monoliths, eroding the statues even more. "The colour of the stone was completely altered," notes one study about the incident. Today, moai preservation is steadily improving, aided by new technology and occasional funds from international organisations. To try to counter the impacts of sea level rise, in 2018, local archaeologists reinforced two seawall-like structures by a moai site called Runga Va'e to prevent waves encroaching onto the ahu platform. They also pieced back together parts of the platform, which had crumbled over time, and reinforced it. The team used drones to make 3D scans of the area, allowing them to plan restoration and conservation work without having to do large, invasive digging operations. US-based non-profit CyArk has also helped the Rapanui people to create accurate 3D models of all the island's ahu and moai using drones, cameras and laser scanners. "You're taking thousands of these overlapping photos and then creating a 3D model taking the points in common between different photos," says Kacey Hadick, CyArk's heritage programme manager who has worked on the island since 2017. "This can help monitor changes over time, rates of erosion, and gives a really good record of what the current state of things are." In 2023 Unesco's undersecretary of cultural heritage Carolina Pérez Dattari allocated $97,000 (£72,000) for damage assessment, repair and future risk management plans for the moai scorched by wildfires in 2022. After an initial analysis, in May 2025, the Ma'u Henua team began the physical conservation work for this project on five of the most fire-damaged moai, says Ariki Tepano Martin, the Ma'u Henua president. More like this:• How the history of humans is written into the fabric of the Earth• The archaeological mystery of Stonehenge's long-lost megaliths• How ancient Maya cities have withstood the ravages of time Their lead conservator Meza Marchant assembled canopies to shield the moai from weather conditions and reduce their moisture levels. She is now treating the fire damage with a chemical solution concocted for the moai by stonework restorers from the University of Florence, who've been working with the Rapanui since 2009. The Italian experts have already tested the solution on small rock fragments from the charred moai in their laboratories: the liquid acts like a gentle but thorough wash that cleans off the black soot from the flames. Meza Marchant will also use other similar chemical treatments developed by the Italians to strengthen the stone, rid it of lichens with an antibiotic-like treatment, and make it water-repellent, protecting it from sea spray and rain damage, similar to the glaze used on the Tongariki, says Tepano Martin. Constant monitoring is carried out to verify whether the treatment is producing the expected results, in the hopes of halting the ongoing deterioration of the moai. High import taxes on these specialist chemicals from Italy, though, have made this operation harder than predicted, Tepano Martin says. Eight years ago, Meza Marchant used some of these Italian techniques to restore the Ahu Huri a Urenga, a rare moai with four hands which is one of the few perched atop a platform on the interior part of the island. The statue, which stands along the winter solstice line and was used for astronomical observations, was re-erected by archaeologists in the 1970s after the 18th Century topplings, but became eroded over time. Once the five moai have been conserved, the Ma'u Henua group aims to use them as a blueprint for all future monolith conservation and restoration projects on the island. Until now, "every hole, every bit of maintenance, required a special permit", says Tepano Martin. "The project with these five moai will help us generate a moai conservation protocol so we no longer need to request permission moai by moai each time." Still, they only have financing for these first five moai. Cognisant of the environmental threats, Tuki and her husband, who also works in tourism, tell me some locals believe the moai would be better preserved in museums. A new museum is currently under construction on the island, and plans suggest it will likely host and protect some moai statues. As we trek up the volcanic hill of a ceremonial village called Orongo, they show me some of the island's most eroded and ruined artefacts: ceremonial hieroglyphs on large slabs of stone around the village. A special moai used to sit atop this hill: the Hoa Hakananai'a statue, which has unique hieroglyphs across its back. The statue was taken from Rapa Nui by British sailors in 1868 and is on display in the British Museum in London. Considering the frailty of these hieroglyphs in particular, Tuki and her husband say some locals believe the statue is safer in London, guarded by security cameras, a glass encasement and humidity gauges. Arguably, the couple says, the Hoa Hakananai'a also serves as an ambassador for Rapanui culture to the hundreds of thousands of people who might be able to visit the museum, but not this remotest of islands. Many locals, on the other hand, are adamant that the statue should be repatriated. For others, though, destruction of the monoliths is simply part of the moai's lifecycle. "Many believe the moai should, as they are, go into the ground and disappear. Let the moai go to their hanua, their land, and let them go back home," says Dale Simpson Jr, an archaeologist at University Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the US who studies Polynesian carving tools. He notes that many communities across the Pacific destroy artefacts and regalia purposefully. "Everything's on a lifecycle, and it begins and it ends. We may see it as destruction, but it's the life line of a statue." Some Rapa Nui locals fervently disagree, however. For them, the moai represent a cornerstone of cultural heritage and an irreplaceable masterpiece of scientific and historical human creativity. They also attract more than 100,000 visitors to Rapa Nui annually, where tourism has become the main driver of the economy. "Their preservation is not merely desirable, it is absolutely imperative," says archaeologist Claudio Cristino-Ferrando from the University of Chile, who is based in Rapa Nui. He thinks standing by and watching these monumental works deteriorate is "entirely untenable" and the idea of their "return to nothingness" misguided. "Such thinking contradicts not only our fundamental duty as custodians of human cultural heritage but also the original intent of Rapa Nui tradition itself," he says – that the moai should serve as testaments of the Polynesian ancestors' arrival on the island. Amidst this debate, the Ma'u Henua group aims to take a multi-pronged approach to ensure the best chances of keeping moai statues on the island, combining conservation with support for the ongoing creation of new artefacts. Alongside the group's conservation work, Tepano Martin hopes to develop programmes that incentivise local artisans to continue making moai and to pass on traditional tuff carving techniques to younger generations. Some of the moai sculpted by Tuki's father can already be found standing more than two metres (6.6ft) tall outside the island's airport. They were also sent to represent the Rapanui people in Santiago and Valparaíso in mainland Chile, and to Spain and Japan. "It's not just about protecting the moai, we're protecting the moai to ensure the preservation of our people on this island," says Tepano Martin. "Our culture lives on. It is still alive, and we can preserve our ancestors' tradition by creating something new." -- For essential climate news and hopeful developments to your inbox, sign up to the Future Earth newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights twice a week. For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
