Date Published 17 November 2011
We need your support to stop a huge gravel pit between Wallingford and Wallingford and Cholsey over the next 25 years.
Branch Partner and local Wallingford resident Julian Walley commented:
I have been inundated with calls from anxious members of the local community and clients both past and present understandably concerned over these proposals. Please go to http://www.cage gravel.org.uk and find out how these proposals may affect you.
Oxfordshire County Council plans to site a new gravel pit to extract five million tonnes of sand and gravel on land between Wallingford and Cholsey, and then backfill it with waste. CAGE (Communities Against Gravel Extraction) has been set up to fight these plans that will severely damage the countryside and affect the lives of the 10,000 people who live in these two communities.
Wallingford and Cholsey are separated by just under a mile of arable and grazing farmland, hedges and trees. It is a peaceful and largely undisturbed area, supporting an amazingly wide variety of bird species and wildlife. The mining of sand and gravel will mean the loss of this natural landscape forever and the well-trodden footpaths, including the Agatha Christie Trail from Winterbrook to Cholsey Church, will be ruined.
The Wallingford Road is also an important thoroughfare for many commuters traveling daily to Oxford, Reading and London from Cholsey station, and others going the other way to school, work or shopping trips in Wallingford. Apart from wrecking the scenery, the extraction of gravel and heavy lorry traffic will bring danger, noise and dirt for all the cars, pedestrians and cyclists.
Oxfordshire County Council is holding a public consultation between 5th September and 31st October. We believe there are more appropriate places to site new gravel pits and that this piece of countryside should be protected for the well being of the two communities and posterity.
