How Green Is My Quarry?

Addressing the impacts of quarrying

A quarry is not everyone’s favourite neighbour. Why not? Changing the public perception of quarrying requires an answer to this question. Is the activity inherently detrimental to neighbours, or can quarrying be managed in a way that avoids adverse effects? If impact is inevitable, how can this best be addressed? In short, is it the perception that is wrong, or the quarrying, or both?

The planning system is the main mechanism by which society decides whether schemes should proceed or not, on a balance of their merits and problems. In this it is well-practised and it understands people’s perceptions. Who would welcome the opportunity to live around the corner from a gypsy encampment, or a hostel for single young males on bail from the courts, let alone a nuclear waste repository? Opposing factions have a habit of turning on the mediator, so perhaps it is not surprising that planning itself has something of an image problem too.

We live in an astonishingly privileged era, with quality of life measured not by how readily we can feed and house ourselves but, partly at least, by the quality of our surroundings. We aspire not to be troubled by messy land uses. This paper comments briefly on what more the quarrying industry can do to present itself as ‘part of’ the modern life that people want, not ‘apart from’ that modern life. An essential first requirement is that the industry should strive to operate ‘green quarries’, so that they are not widely perceived as ‘messy land uses’. This is not just because proper attention to land use is good for the environment, but because it is good for people and society too. With this in mind, the other issue explored briefly is how the industry communicates with everyone else. If the public still perceives quarrying as a threat, how can the industry address this in a constructive way rather than reinforce that perception?

Green quarries

Thirty years ago quarries were, with a few exceptions, not ‘green’. Many were scarring the landscape, degrading their local surroundings, generating large amounts of lorry traffic on roads often unsuited to them, and managed on the basis that the operators were only doing their job. Too often they gave a bad impression of the industry.

There have been great improvements at quarries over the years. These have been achieved partly through better site management and improved restoration. Restructuring in the industry has also helped, as the less competent firms, which tend to be the smaller ones, have been unable to meet the higher standards now expected and have often been squeezed out.

Today there is little excuse for anything other than very high standards throughout the process of quarry development. Site selection, planned development, environmental mitigation, operation, restoration etc are all skills on which large amounts of high-quality advice is available. There are guidance documents, web-based advice, experienced professionals and continually emerging new techniques in quarry operations (particularly in computer technology) which leave little to chance. It is also especially encouraging to see mineral companies increasingly showing their commitment to quality by acting in ways that the planning system could not insist upon. This includes initiatives like environmental management systems, enhancement of biodiversity, offering restoration bonds, and signing up to corporate social responsibility. All these are welcome.

One of the significant problems facing the industry, however, is that public perception is still affected by the legacy of what the industry used to do. These problems will hopefully not repeat themselves in future, but people do not know that. Badly restored sites that can be seen in some places today are not a good advertisement for modern quarrying capabilities. Companies may be able to demonstrate that modern sites can control these problems, but while the historical legacy is still all too plain for people to see they will start their engagement with the public on the back foot. An important message is for the industry as a whole to get to grips with its own inherited messy land. The planning system could do more than it does to force the hand of some businesses, but the central imperative should be voluntarily to improve the industry’s image.

Taking millions of tonnes of material out of the ground cannot, of course, be done without having real effects on the environment. Nonetheless, the impact of development can be reduced by design. Steps can be take to ameliorate some of the impact. Environmental compensation can be provided by creating new environmental benefits elsewhere to make up for some of the losses. The quality of what is there at present can be enhanced. Attractive new land uses can be provided in place of the ones that were there beforehand. Alternative benefits can be offered to buy favour with those who are still inevitably affected. But both the quarrying process and the end result are still likely to involve something distinctly different from what was there in the first place. Even with all these good works, the industry will still have to persuade everyone that the changes to what was there beforehand are ‘worth it’ for extracting the mineral which society needs.

To achieve that persuasion at least two things must be done. A sound technical case for the proposals will have to be demonstrated, and it must be entirely clear that the operations will definitely be handled in the way they are promised. In other words, the industry (and not just individual companies) must show itself to be trustworthy, to understand what worries people, and to be able to deliver on its promises.

With the technical expertise that can now be applied to all stages of the quarrying process, it has become easier to be clear about what the environmental effects of schemes will be. This has to underpin the process of explaining to local people what the changes will be that are being planned near where they live. At least some reassurance is offered to people if companies can answer all their questions and show that changes can be made to accommodate the legitimate concerns that they may have. Get the proposals right, and you are half way to a green quarry.

Technical merit has to be demonstrated. The planning system offers the forum within which claims and counter-claims can be examined, sometimes in enormous detail. If quarrying proposals end up being decided at a public inquiry, the full force of the inquisitorial approach can be brought to bear. This is certainly stressful and expensive, but in the long run everyone benefits from this democracy in action. It forces people to be clear about what they are proposing or are worried about, it identifies merit (or lack of it) and it is the inspiration for continually striving for high standards of practice. For the most part it clarifies neatly the areas of disagreement and where the balance of advantage lies on each detailed issue. In other words, it explains the decision in detail to the loser (at least then the loser does not feel quite so annoyed about the outcome if the logic of the decision has been explained). Sometimes objections are found to be largely without foundation, and just occasionally the proposals themselves are found to be so wanting that, before they can be refused, they are withdrawn. Anyone wanting to re-route a river should study first such an experience with a ball clay proposal at Southacre in Devon at an inquiry in 1998.

It is also necessary to remind ourselves that we would be deluded if we believed that all quarries nowadays are operated to high standards. This is of enormous importance to the whole industry because the perception of quarrying is set by the publicity surrounding the worst performers more than by the achievements of the rest. Just occasionally, opposing a quarrying scheme is something that both environmentalists and the established industry can agree about. A particularly unfortunate case is currently trying everyone’s patience in the Peak District, where a public inquiry recently opened into an enforcement appeal at Backdale (where the author is the advocate for local objectors). This site is widely considered by the locals and campaigners as an affront to the National Park. The established industry finds it an embarrassment which undermines the standards it is trying to promote. To their great credit Glebe Mines Ltd are refusing to take for processing the small quantity of fluorspar that is being discovered at Backdale.

This paper has made the case for technical and professional competence and high standards of practice on the ground as key starting points for green quarrying. However, it must also be recognized that there are limits to what professional competence and technical arguments can achieve. What happens when local residents challenge proposals with emotional arguments? Sometimes it may be possible to turn these into technical ones, so that when someone claims that a quarrying proposal will have a terrible effect on the countryside, for example, a professional might be able to show them it will not be too awful because a landscape-character assessment helped shape the quarrying proposals. Up to a point, professionals can tackle the worries which underlie people’s objections. Many professionals in the quarrying industry are now trained in how to present the case for mineral working against the policies of an authority’s Minerals Local Plan, and to see all the planning issues through that prism. When residents start talking about issues which do not feature in plans and policies, an initial reaction is to suggest that those views do not count for much. However, this is hardly likely to endear the developer to local people. Suddenly professionals find themselves outside their technical comfort zone. What happens then?

Communication

The reality is that the case for a mineral development also has to be made against a backdrop of pre-existing perceptions about quarrying and, in many cases, ignorance among decision-makers and local people. Ignorance, incidentally, is not a criticism: people cannot be expected to know as much about mineral working as members of the Institute of Quarrying. The public’s perception of the minerals industry is affected fundamentally by their own experiences of it, plus what they hear from other people. Their own experiences will derive from living near mineral workings or experiencing them when travelling. Some will have experiences of meeting people involved in the industry and this can have a real impact on how they form a judgement about mineral working.

How can mineral developers demonstrate trustworthiness and an understanding of what worries people and what should be done to engage with the public? If people are to have any sympathy with what quarrying is trying to do, quarrying’s proponents have to be open with them and have to respect their point of view. The following suggestions are examples of the kind of action that should be taken:

• engage with all shades of local opinion, without assuming that formal bodies, such as Parish Councils, are necessarily representative
• people who do not want quarries look for problems, so remove the skeletons from company cupboards to make sure there are as few problems as possible to be found
• admit it if there are problems: contrary to some opinion, people are not stupid
• when problems become apparent, tackle them and then explain to anyone who complained what has been done
• if people think there is a problem, then there is an issue to consider even if the company does not think it is a problem
• be clear what is within the powers of the company to tackle and what the company alone cannot change, and make sure people understand the difference
• if engaging with people in a consultation of some kind, this has to be meaningful for the public: if people feel the consultation was a sham and it was never the company’s intention to change its proposals, then the last state is worse than the first as the exercise will have created opponents unnecessarily.

Further sound advice on the practicalities of dealing with the public, aimed at both mineral companies and mineral planning authorities, has been published by The Environment Council¹.

Most of this paper so far has been about making a sound argument and suggesting what practical steps can be taken to promote it. There is also the matter of exactly how to deal with the public, and this is often overlooked. There is no reason why people should restrict their assessment of quarrying proposals to the technical issues. Doing that, fairly obviously, would play straight into the hands of professionals, who seem to have all the answers. How much more reassuring for residents to set out an argument based on other terms of reference which are not so easily tackled. They then feel they have a little more power in a debate that could otherwise be very one-sided if they stuck to technical issues. There are lots of points that local people can talk about:

• ‘We have had quarrying here for so long that it’s time it stopped now’;
• ‘The landscape you wish to change is special to us in its present form because it helps define the character of our village’;
• ‘Allowing this new plant will make further working in future more likely, rather than less likely’;
• ‘Our village has already contributed enormously to society: now it’s someone else’s turn’;
• ‘The proposal will change our surroundings for ever and would be disproportionately damaging to so small a village’.

While professional people are trying to be technical and reliable, residents may try to create a framework for review where the cards are not all in the promoters’ hands. What often happens, it would appear, is a dialogue of the deaf. Promoters and opponents of quarrying both think the other is missing the point and failing to deal with the real issues. There is not much that can be done professionally to argue about these kinds of points. They may not be central to planning decisions, but they are central to how the industry is perceived by the public. How can the gap between the parties be bridged so that a difference in outlook does not undermine the wider standing of the industry in the public eye?

In many cases the industry will find itself up against the three related issues of: resistance to change; fear; and aversion to risk. People will generally live in an area or have bought into it for what it is, not for what it might become in future. The prospect of change can be very worrying. Even with the offer of lots of benefits, people are much more likely to challenge threatened amenity losses than to support promised future amenity gains. People do not want to give mineral companies the benefit of the doubt when they are facing large-scale change to their surroundings in the years ahead.

We may all be able to agree that change is inevitable, at least for some communities, and that the residents are likely to find this challenging. What is needed is a process of managing change but historically neither the minerals industry nor the planning system has been good at this. There needs to be a greater emphasis on more positive ‘local vision’, making clear what the benefits will be from the process of change and demonstrating commitment to bringing these about. One way of tackling the management of change is through a local authority’s community strategy, if participants could be persuaded to have the breadth of vision that this implies.

There is no reason in principle why a vision for managing change should not be built into development plans as well as into individual developments, but it will be a more labour-intensive process than we are used to. In 2004 the author put forward some proposals of this kind in a research project for ODPM², including the suggestion that ‘industrial minerals areas’ could be established when there was little choice about where scarce industrial minerals would be worked in the years ahead, virtually guaranteeing the long-term future of the industry, but in return expecting large-scale advance planning (and investment in transport and environmental infrastructure) that would not normally be justified for shorter-term operations. Doncaster MBC has put forward an option for designating such areas for dolomite as part of its newly emerging plan³, so there may be a debate about the idea. A key point, therefore, is that the process of deciding the future of quarrying may well increasingly depend on having a strategy for managing change which engages with those affected.

There is a rapidly increasing body of ideas and skills in the matter of managing the process of engagement with the public. Someone who has developed a business around this is Debra Stein, who runs a small firm in California specializing in community relations to overcome NIMBY opposition. There is a wealth of advice on her web site: www.gcastrategies.com. For example, she argues: ‘All community opposition is not alike, and the wrong type of outreach response can create more problems than it solves.

‘If opposition isn’t caused by lack of information, then newsletters and fact sheets will backfire. Making concessions won’t resolve opposition based on unmet emotional needs. You can’t negotiate a conflict of values. Endless meetings won’t solve conflicts of interest. But, by carefully diagnosing the cause of opposition and undertaking outreach activities specifically tailored to respond to that cause, you can reduce citizen opposition to your project’⁴.

She offers practical advice on how to respond to different kinds of concern. For example, for those who pursue a particular moral or ethical line, such as the sanctity of existing open space, consider presenting them with other moral and ethical values such as the case for the materials for a hospital building programme: they may well recognize that such positions are equally valuable, and then a dialogue becomes possible to find a way forward.

Her advice on meeting residents’ emotional needs is equally immediate: ‘Hell hath no fury like a citizen who thinks he or she has been humiliated; so go out of your way to show neighbours how much you respect them. Make eye contact, using your right eye to look into the other person’s right eye. Refer to individuals by name. And keep your hands away from your mouth while listening to neighbours because hiding your lips while listening sends out strong signals of rejection’⁵.

Debra Stein’s is a pragmatic response to real life circumstances. Engaging with the opposition can work, and it is important that this means for opponents as well as for proponents, but it requires a full understanding of what might go wrong or has gone wrong before; then real progress is possible. Mineral companies clearly need to manage their businesses in ways which maximize their chances of development proposals passing through the planning system efficiently. ‘Managed engagement’ provides a route map for doing this, and it also provides tips for minerals planning in local authorities and central government. It is a practical and potentially effective response to circumstances and appears to have much merit, not least because anyone can start using it straight away. Perhaps some mineral companies already think like this.

Two approaches which are virtually guaranteed to fail to improve the public perception of the quarrying industry are the avoidance of dialogue and confrontation. ‘Not getting involved’ will have appeal to anyone who has organized a public meeting to explain a development to residents and succeeded only in unifying local opposition to it. There is an attraction in giving people fewer issues to worry about, not making a spectacle of a development proposal and trying to get on with the job with as little fuss as possible. There is an entirely defensible argument that the new planning system, which encourages public engagement, will only serve to inform opponents, not generate buy-in to proposed developments. Avoiding people will almost certainly backfire. A low profile suggests something to hide, and points which look like success to proponents (eg an officer recommendation in favour) look like an undemocratic stitch-up to objectors. Highly vocal campaigns can result, and repairing the damage through discussion becomes a progressively less feasible option. A whiff of ‘pulling a fast one’ takes away legitimacy for the decision and risks bringing people on to the streets and literally in front of the bulldozers.

Confrontation brings an alternative set of own goals. ‘NIMBY’ has become a widely used term of abuse. This is perhaps odd, since residents who in other ways devote their spare time to looking after the quality of their surroundings for the benefit of everyone are viewed as socially responsible citizens. Debra Stein sounds another warning: ‘Project sponsors are often extremely eager to condemn all opponents as ‘NIMBYs’, believing that categorically describing all opponents as…selfish protectionists somehow eliminates any obligation to address citizens’ concerns. By characterizing opponents as NIMBYs, project sponsors hope they can dismiss community concerns about perfectly reasonable issues such as design, construction or operation of the facility’⁶. This sends out the message that developers do not care what the locals think and it can say more about how the quarrying industry deserves to be perceived than it does about how residents actually perceive it.

Worthwhile though the managed-engagement approach is, no one is claiming it will solve all the problems of public conflicts over mineral working. This approach to tackling objectors is pitched at development control. A comparable set of skills would need to be developed for application during plan-making. Nor does it help create a long-term climate which is significantly more favourable to quarrying. That is a different matter which requires a longer-term and more wide-ranging examination of procedures and the concerns that underlie objection to development in the first place.

Conclusion

At the Institute of Quarrying’s millennium conference five years ago Chris Norman gave a paper on ‘Minerals planning and public perception’. Much of what he said then is just as relevant today, but since then all of government has become more committed to taking the public along with decision-makers. It is, therefore, entirely appropriate that the Institute should be devoting a whole conference to this five years later. The minerals industry has always had to ask the public for a social ‘licence to operate’. That is very different from obtaining planning permissions on the basis of a technically sound case. If the industry does not get on the right side of the public then it will be mired in opposition and distrust. This will wash off on the industry’s social standing, then recruitment, profitability, staff morale and investor confidence. There is no need to take the dead-end route; go for the socially responsible alternative. That way just about everybody wins.

References

1. Good Practice in Stakeholder Engagement in the Aggregates Sector, 2004, The Environment Council.
2. Industrial Minerals: issues for planning, 2004, British Geological Survey (for ODPM).
3. Core Strategy Options, Doncaster Local Development Framework, June 2005, Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council (Issue 24).
4. Overcoming community opposition, Land Development magazine, Winter 1997; on www.gcastrategies.com.
5. Getting from NIMBY to Yes: How developers can overcome opposition and mobilise support for multi-family housing, Multifamily Trends 2001; on www.gcastrategies.com.
6. The Ethics of NIMBYism, Journal of Housing and Community Projects, Nov/Dec 1996; on www.gcastrategies.com.

Richard Bate of Green Balance presented this paper at the Institute of Quarrying’s annual conference symposium in October 2005