A NEIGHBOUR of a quarry whose owners have won permission to extend and deepen it says the dust from the site is making his farm unviable.
Farmer Clive Fry says the silica dust blown on to his fields from Pigsdon Quarry at Launcells, near Bude, causes danger to his sheep and could also be unhealthy for him and his wife.
On Thursday Cornwall Council's strategic planning committee granted E and JW Glendinning permission to extend the quarry, but Mr Fry says the planners had not put sufficient conditions and safeguards in place.
The company wants to extend the quarry, which employs 15 to 20 people, to extract minerals and construct a spoil tip.
Mr Fry also questioned the impartiality of the planning committee, pointing out that Cornwall Council's highways division was the quarry's biggest customer.
The committee gave approval by 17 votes to none, with one abstention, but imposed tougher conditions on the operation of the site, including more robust protection of the water table and neighbouring boreholes and the setting-up of a group to liaise between the operators and local residents – which Mr Fry dismissed as merely a talking shop with no powers to make improvements.
He told the committee the dust was implicated as a carcinogen and he could sometimes farm only a third of his 54 acres, a situation he feared would now get worse.
"Our lives are on hold," he said, adding that his farm's water supply, drawn from a borehole, was also affected by the dust.
A representative of Launcells Parish Council, Paul Wingard, said it had received a substantial number of complaints from residents.
"Glendinnings have not been good neighbours," said Mr Wingard. "They have not met local people about the noise or toxic silica dust.
"All those problems will increase with this extension."
It had been suggested to Glendinnings that it could mitigate the dust, noise and traffic complaints by building a road flanked by bunds across its land, but this had been rejected on the grounds of expense.
The managing director of Glendinnings, Barry Wilson, said it was aware of the dust and took care over health regulations, as it had to protect its own employees.
He assured the committee that if there was a problem with local boreholes an alternative water supply would be provided.
Mr Wilson said the company would continue to look at an alternative route within the quarry, but that was not possible at the moment as it was running at a loss.
Local councillor Paula Dolphin said that since Glendinnings took over the traffic had increased, and now 35 to 50 vehicles a day were passing down the area's narrow lanes: "Neighbours sometimes have to drive their cars into the hedge because of lorries coming down the lane.
"I know how important this quarry is to the community but it needs more robust measures to protect the water supply for the surrounding farms, and to mitigate the dust and noise levels."
Case officer Tim Warne supported the developments, saying the positives outweighed the limited harm.
Pigsdon aggregate is a key constituent of road surfaces and Glendinnings submitted that deepening and expanding the quarry would extend its operational life by more than 20 years.
The intention was to allow the site to regenerate naturally.
On completion, the tip surface would be restored to agriculture, and the hedgerows replaced.
