This article is from page 16 of the 2006-04-18 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 16 JPG
TURKISH firm, GAMA Construction, has lodged plans for a fourth quarry in a bid to advance the construction work of the €190 million Ennis bypass.
Currently, the company is working towards having the eastern section of the scheme open by next October.
This will remove heavy goods vehicles from Ennis’s clogged road network.
In the new application, GAMA is seeking to extract 176,420 m3 of rock.
The plan seeks to develop a quarry on a site extending to 4.34 hectares with an extraction area of 3.635 hectares.
The permission is sought for a total period of 24 months.
According to GAMA, “the proposed development is solely for the purpose of the provision of rock to the N18, Ennis bypass, which is presently under-construction immediately to the west of the application site.”
“Access to the site will be directly from the route of the Ennis bypass road scheme, presently under-construction immediately west of the application site. No public roads will be used to haul materials to or from the application site.”
Already, the company has secured planning for three quarries along the route, to excavate 900,000 m3 of rock material, with 480,000 m3 of the total to be excavated from the largest quarry at Killow/Kilbreckan on the outskirts of Ennis. This 37acre quarry is by far the biggest.
All quarries that have secured planning permission have a duration of 24 months.
The works on the bypass are due to end in 12 months time.
If there is any opposition to the current planning application, it is difficult to see how much of a material difference the operation of the quarry will make to the bypass project.
The Turkish company, however, will be confident that the application will secure planning permission, due to the fact that no roads will be used to transport the materials to the bypass.
In its most recent decision, the council granted planning permission for the largest quarry.
This was done in light of the fact that it would result in a vast reduction in the amount of material to be imported on the existing road network and thus represented a more sustainable approach towards the construction of the bypass.