Environmental protesters have dug in to protest at the extension
of quarrying in the Peak District National Park.
The protesters have constructed a network of tunnels and
treehouses at a 32-acre site at Stanton Lees in Derbyshire where a
quarrying company has been granted permission to expand long
abandoned workings in order to extract sandstone on a large
scale.
The result, says a front page story in Saturday's Guardian
newspaper, will be 'a battle of the intensity of the road protests at
Twyford Down and Newbury in the 1990s'. The quarrying is also
fiercely opposed by the Campaign for the Protection of Rural
England.
The quarry planning permission dates from the early 1950s and is
just one of at least 100 similar permissions still hanging over
national parks. The company involved meanwhile claims that the effect
of the new quarrying 'will be minimal'.
It seems absurd that an outdated planning permission gives a
company the right to open up workings in the middle of the most
popular national park in Europe. For more details see the Guardian
story online.
