Quarry portion 26 farm 22 Zouterivier - request for support and our actions so far

[Mal Morrow]

Hello Councillor Rass -

We talked briefly this evening about our community problems with a quarry that is operated at portion 26 of farm 22 Zouterivier, off Rondeberg Road, in Ward 32.

I am copying this email to my community email group for their information.

Here is how to get to see the quarry:

• Drive down Reygersdal to Saxonwold and turn left into Klein Dassenberg Road.
• Drive down Klein Dassenberg, past Camphill Village, to the next large dirt road, which is Rondeberg Road, opposite Groenrivier Estates, and turn right into Rondeberg Road.
• Drive down Rondeberg until Claudewil Broilers.  Rondeberg Road bends left - but don't go left there, head straight, following a sign towards Dageraad.
• Almost immediately turn right towards a line of bluegum trees.
• Drive down the road for about 1km, past the chicken farm.  After that on the right is a gate, which is the quarry.  There is a stockpile dump of quarried material there, you will see it.

From the time you follow the signs at Dageraad, you are on a private road, a servitude, which is shared by all its residents and owned by the people who own the land it crosses.  The quarry owns part of it, and the quarry sends the heaviest traffic over it.

The quarry usually operates only for two months of the year.  It has just finished mining between February and March.  During this time, it sent about 30 trucks up and down this road about 7 times each.  The road was rapidly and completely destroyed.  They did nothing about this.

I organised the community and contacted the quarry operator, the Council and the Dept of Mineral and Energy Affairs to a) find out whether the quarry was operating legally, and b) to try either to get it to follow any regulations or to stop it operating.

The quarry has a conditional mining permit from the DME and a conditional land use departure from the Council.  The operator routinely violates the conditions of both the permit and the departure.  (I am sending you both documents in separate emails, because they are large documents.)

The quarry has consistently carried on in this way for many years.  This year, we got gatvol and I took serious action.  I think between myself and the Council we scared the quarry operator into doing the minimum, because they patched up the road last week, and it is serviceable for the time being.  But it's not a great job - not, I think, good enough to satisfy the Council's standards.  Mr William Kingwell (021 4006606) and Mr David Viljoen (021 5501189) can tell you more - they are well-aware of our difficulties.

One of the land use departure conditions is that a Monitoring Committee must be established to monitor the satisfaction of the conditions of the permit and the departure.  This Committee has never met.  Mr Kingwell suggested that as the Ward Councillor, you might be the ideal person to convene this Committee.  At this Committee, the community could submit its complaints formally.  My goal personally would be to get the Committee to recommend to the Sub-Council that the departure be revoked, because its conditions have been so completely disregarded.

I have a lot of past email to Council staff, which I can send you in due course.  The Council staff have been extremely helpful.  In addition to Mr Kingwell and Mr Viljoen, the following people have given us valuable assistance:

• Sharon Damon (021 4006451) - Planning Inspectorate
• William Kingwell (021 4006606) - Roads
• David Viljoen (021 5501189) - Planning Inspectorate
• Katy Spalding (021 5501059) - Environment

You can get the legal and procedural position of the Council from them - I hope they will be as glad to help you as they were to help me.  Please convey my thanks to them if you speak to them.  They have lots of evidence of the quarry's misdemeanours (photos, etc) and I think they plan to take the operator to court over violations of the departure conditions.

But this is not enough.  I intend to get the quarry shut.  The community is depending on me for final action, and I am resolved to serve them.  I hope you will help me do that, and we can show what can be done!

I will send two other emails having large attachments.  One is the conditional land use departure document, the other is the Environmental Management Plan, which is effectively the conditions of the mining permit issued by the DME.

Sincerely yours,

Mal Morrow
Land-owner, portion 56 of portion 22 Zouterivier, PO Box 83, Philadelphia 7304
C: +27 (84) 9944364
W: +27 (21) 4171849
F: +27 (86) 5114459
E: malm...@gmail.com