D-day for the fearful quarry campaigners

JOAN

- By JOSEPH CONNOLLY Local democracy reporter

Thomas says that the battle to stop a huge quarry being built next to her home has plagued her life for the last four years to the point where it has become a job.Then she pauses.

It’s because she’s starting to cry.

“It’s in your head almost every waking hour,’ she says, her lips trembling. “You wake up thinking about it. It’s something that you can’t sleep well with. It's just horrendous.”

Today, residents will find out whether years of stress, research and campaigning will have all been for nothing.

Nottinghamshire County Council's planning committee was meeting this morning to decide whether the quarry, between Clifton and Barton-in-Fabis, opposite Attenborough Nature Reserve, can go ahead.

A group of at least 75 locals, alongside applicants Land Logical Ltd, is planning to be there.

The proposal is that the quarry will be in operation for 12 years, with the land “restored” for 30 years afterwards.

Key ecological areas would be “protected and actively managed to support wildlife”.

Joan, 77, and her husband Colin, 81, will be at the meeting, as will Mary Brimelow, 87.

“The dust from the processing plant and from the lorry traffic will blow directly to us,” says Mary. “We are terrified. Just absolutely terrified.”

Land Logical Ltd says that air quality “will be managed through numerous onsite control measures”.

Mary, Joan and Colin are three of around 400 retirees who live at Lark Hill Retirement Village in Clifton, just 250 metres away from the site. Like Joan, many of them have spent the past five years as a team unpicking thousands of pages of documents that make up the plans, and researching how it will affect them.