Horrified residents today branded a plan to open two huge quarries in the green belt as a “blot on the landscape.”
Contractor F G Davis wants to open sand and gravel quarries off Swindon Road on the Dudley-Staffordshire border.
This is despite abandoning its original application to excavate the site in 2002 amid hostility to the scheme. Householders in Wall Heath say they are “appalled” that the project, which would cover an area the size of nine football pitches, has been resurrected and on a larger scale.
If it goes ahead the scheme will be almost five times as big as the 2002 proposal, sprawling across 18 acres rather than four acres.
Dennis Skinner, aged 72, of Swindon Road, Wall Heath, said: “I’m appalled.
“It shocks me that they even consider going ahead with it because it’s a beautiful bit of countryside down there and everyone knows the effect quarries have on the local environment.
“Knowing the level of vehicles we have down here at the moment, the thought of all these lorries going down their fills me with dread.
“It sounds enormous. It will just be a blot on the landscape but it’s the amount of traffic that is the biggest concern.
“A lot of people will be appalled that it’s being reconsidered.”
Another Wall Heath resident, who did not want to be named, said the scheme would be a “disaster” for the area. He said the quarries would be too close to housing and that the roads would not be able to cope with the stream of lorries.
But he said: “We are going to have a tremendous fight to stop this happening.”
Councillor Dave Tyler, ward member for Wall Heath, has pledged to lead a new fight against the quarries, saying they would “impact on Wall Heath people for a generation.”
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