Bleaklow and MMC Still Quarrying
6 April 2009
Despite the ruling of the Court of Appeal against Bleaklow Industriea nd MMC Midlands, quarrying activity has stiil been going on at Backdale Quarry on Longstone Edge.
For example, on Sunday April 5 a machine was seen breaking limestone rock, presumably as a precursor to crushing it. The next day a rock crusher was seen in operation.
The 1952 planning permission still stands: the companies are permitted to extract the mineral fluorspar. As a result of the Court of appeal judgement, they are entitled to sell limestone, but only if it is obtained in the process of extractintg the fluorspar, and even then only in a ratio of two tons of limestone to one ton of fluorspar.
It is our understanding that MMC are in fact not selling any fluorspar at all! So the sale of limestone should be illegal, and so there is no justification for them to quarry the limestone.
The Save Longstone Edge Group has brought this to the attention of the Peak District National Park Authority.
In the first photograph below the rock breaking machine can be seen in the foreground and the rock crushing machine in the background. This operation does not seem to be related to the "winning and working of fluorspar" as required by the 1952 planning permission. The next two photographs were taken from the same place on 4 April and 9 April. If you look at the position of the machinery and the sizes of the piles of crushed rock you can see that much work has taken place during the 5 days. Is this legal? (click on the images to see a large version.)
