Building-Waste Recycling Plant Proposed for Egham
REMINDER TO SEND YOUR LETTER OF OBJECTION BEFORE FRIDAY 28TH OCTOBER!
If you haven't already done so, please send your objections in asap! See email trail below (from Sunday 18 Sept) for a reminder of what to say and where to send it.
You may have seen this article in The Informer this week (page 5):
http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/s/2101558_parents_mount_campaign_against_egham_extraction_plans
A letter to the editor was also published in the Egham News/Surrey Herald (page 14), signed by Cllr Moreton Moore and Alan Alderson (Egham Town), Cllr Linda Gillham and Cllr Elaine Gill (Thorpe) and me on behalf of ERA.
We CAN stop this but strength of public opinion is an important factor at this stage. Please take the time to let Surrey County Council know how you feel.
The houses in Egham on the south of the railway line have had letters through their doors. If you would like a copy of these to print and circulate, or to read yourself, then please reply to me at this address and I will email them out to you (I haven't attached them to this mail to avoid being targetted by spam filters/firewalls).
Thank you
Genna Clark
ERA Communications and Projects
From: era_update@live.co.uk
To: era_update@live.co.uk
Subject: Gravel ACTION Update: Building-Waste Recycling Plant Proposed for Egham
Date: Sun, 18 Sep 2011 21:50:39 +0100
Dear anti-gravel campaigner
POORER AIR QUALITY + MORE CONGESTED ROADS (+ FLOODING) = WORSE QUALITY OF LIFE & FALLING HOUSE PRICES
In this email, the ERA Committee is asking you to object to the Aggregates Recycling Proposal and to help distribute a campaign flyer to all households in the area. The Aggregates Recycling Proposal is currently being reviewed to assess the viability of installing a plant that crushes concrete and other waste building materials in the land just south of Manorcroft School (that, on top of the gravel extraction and concrete processing, all in the Green Belt).
This is a real and very serious threat to Egham, Hythe, Thorpe, Stroude, Virginia Water and the surrounding area, so please forward this email to anyone you know who lives in these areas.
Commuters and other road users travelling to (and through) Egham will also be affected, so please forward this information to those people too.
THE PRESENT POSITION
As you know, land on the south side of Egham Town, behind Manorcroft School and down past Procter & Gamble and Great Fosters towards Virginia Water, has been earmarked by Surrey County Council as a possible site for gravel extraction and a concrete processing plant.
If it goes ahead, this could be in production for anything from 20 to 30 years, resulting in as many as 300-700 additional truck and car movements on our already congested local roads EVERY DAY.
In a second blow dealt to us this month, the land is now being considered by Surrey County Council (SCC) for crushing concrete and other waste building materials (that is, aggregates recycling) as well. This would mean even more traffic and air pollution for Egham and the surrounding truck routes.
Both proposals are completely unacceptable and unreasonable, yet they are still strong possibilities unless we can make sure our voices are heard.
SAY NO TO GRAVEL EXTRACTION, CONCRETE PROCESSING AND AN AGGREGATES RECYCLING FACILITY IN EGHAM
In terms of the gravel extraction proposal, we need to wait until the planning application (submitted to SCC by Hansons) is finalised before we can take any action. This is currently scheduled for December, but it could be put back to the spring or summer, as it has been dragging on for over two years already.
But regarding the recently released Aggregates Recycling Proposal (otherwise called the AR Development Plan Document, or ‘AR DPD’), we MUST take action as a community before the deadline of Friday 28th October. Please note that some documents refer to a deadline of 7th October, but this has been extended to the 28th – even so, an early response is recommended.
**PLEASE TAKE ACTION NOW (DEADLINE IS FRIDAY 28TH OCTOBER AT THE LATEST)**
1.) Petitions are not effective at stopping this kind of proposal, nor are identical letters. Egham Residents’ Assocation, along with your local Egham, Thorpe and Surrey County councillors and Thorpe Residents’ Association, is asking each of you to write a personal letter to Surrey County Council by Friday 28th October at the latest. Better still, object by using the form available at www.surreycc.gov.uk/mineralsplan.
The postal address is Surrey County Council, Freepost KT2451, Kingston-upon-Thames, KT1 2BR (no stamp required). Alternatively, you may send your response by email to mdf@surreycc.gov.uk, including your name and postal address and clear references to the document/question/Egham sites (Milton Park Farm and Whitehall Farm) on which you are commenting.
TOGETHER, WE CAN STOP THIS!
2.) LEAFLET DISTRIBUTORS ARE ALSO REQUIRED. Our Surrey County Councillor, Yvonna Lay, is producing an In Touch publication and needs help to distribute it to all houses in the area in early/mid October. If you can spare some time to help out, then please let me know at era_update@live.co.uk. Thank you.
LEGITIMATE GROUNDS FOR YOUR OBJECTION
If you have the time to read it, the AR DPD is a document of 50 pages. I draw your attention especially to Policy AR3 (on page 21) in which Milton Park Farm, Egham and Whitehall Farm, Egham are nominated for aggregates recycling facilities. I suggest that you refer to AR3 in your response.
Legitimate grounds for objection include the following points, which I encourage you to personalise with your own wording and views:
1) Unsuitability of the road network for the anticipated additional transport movements. Roads affected will include New Wickham Lane, Thorpe Lea Road, Vicarage Road, The Avenue, the Runnymede Roundabout, Manorcrofts Road, Station Road, Church Road and Egham High Street.Please personalise your letter with your views on specific congestion areas, level crossing issues,‘pinch points’, accident hotspots etc. And include photographic evidence if you have any.
2) Effect on Air Quality in an area that is already an Air Quality Management Area (AQMA). For your information, this point refers to any emissions or dust created or leaked in the process, and also to the pollution caused by the additional traffic and HGVs, both near Manorcroft School/housing estate and along the proposed transport routes too. The area next to the M25 is designated as an AQMA as it had levels of pollutants and particles that exceeded EU limits the last time they were measured. But levels of particulates (very small dust particles) have not been recorded recently due to budget cuts and so we don’t know the current readings, nor do we have any readings at all for the majority of the proposed transport routes.
This is a big deal as we are talking about areas next to a junior school and nursery, housing estate, residential properties and leisure facilities. These pollutants can cause deep lung tissue damage and even enter the brain through the bloodstream so they need to be closely monitored and reduced where necessary. Please give any anecdotal evidence around this that you can offer, but stick to facts and avoid emotive language where possible.
3) Consideration of the Egham sites in the Aggregates Recycling Proposal (AR DPD) is premature as it presumes that approval for Hanson’s application to excavate gravel from Milton Park Farm is a foregone conclusion, which it definitely is not, not least because of the issues above and also the increased flood risk for Egham. (Please express your personal views about this too.)
4) It is also inappropriate to include the Egham sites in the Aggregates Recycling Proposal (AR DPD) as new aggregates recycling facilities should only be sited on ‘quarries’ once a number of other possibilities have been fully explored and ruled out. Those possibilities are still available in Surrey. In addition, North West Surrey already has six operational aggregates recycling facilities as opposed to far fewer in other areas of Surrey so we should not be subjected to any further burden.
Send your letter or e-mail to the address given above to arrive by Friday 28th October at the latest.
KEEP UP TO DATE WITH ERA
You can get general updates by joining our Facebook group (click the ‘like’ link on the ‘SAY NO to Gravel Extraction and a Concrete Processing Plant in Egham’ page). Or you will be kept up-to-date at times of action with an email update.
Kind regards
Genna Clark
ERA Committee
