members are conscious of their environmental responsibilities and they take them seriously. For every silica sand operation a planning and permitting regime must be followed in order to ensure that the operations will minimise their impact upon the environment and local communities.
Environmental protection measures, coupled with sensitive quarry design, can be highly effective. It is quite possible that there is a silica sand quarry in your neighbourhood, or maybe you drive past one every day and you don’t even know it!
Even during their working lifetime, silica sand quarries provide attractive havens for wildlife. Various species of birds are drawn towards exposed sand faces for nesting or towards the man-made lakes that are used to clean and continually reuse process water. Quarry operators seek to schedule their operations in order to work in harmony with the species that choose to visit the quarry site.
When time comes for quarrying operations to cease, each quarry operator is committed to a restoration programme that is agreed with the local authority as part of the planning and permitting process. It is common for quarry restorations to enhance the biodiversity of the area so that more plant and animal species thrive there afterwards than before quarrying began. Many former quarries achieve protected SSSI (site of special scientific interest) status, which is testament to the high quality of restorations undertaken.
Examples of environmental controls:
In sensitive areas, quarry sites operate regimes designed to minimise the potential for sand grains to be picked up by the wind in dry weather. This may involve the use of water sprays, road sweepers, enclosure of plant and equipment and minimisation of exposed areas of sand faces. All of this is backed up by extensive monitoring regimes to ensure compliance with the latest guidelines on air quality and nuisance prevention.
In order to minimise noise nuisance, the timing of specific operations is strictly controlled so that it only occurs at designated times of day. Screening bunds are installed to act as barriers to noise propagation. The use of the latest “white noise” reversing alarms on quarry mobile plant helps to eliminate the nuisance caused by traditional reversing bleepers. Again, all of this is backed up by monitoring regimes to ensure that any noise impact at sensitive properties is within prescribed limits.