Quarry Operations Blamed For Road Damage And Safety Risks
Ministry of Works and Infrastructure officials are lamenting the dangers quarries can pose to infrastructure and public safety.
The issues were raised at Wednesday’s Parliamentary Joint Select Committee on Land and Physical Infrastructure.
Chief Technical Officer at the Ministry of Works and Infrastructure, Marc Cooper, said the actions of unscrupulous quarry owners can damage roads and rivers and put motorists at risk.
He noted that the issue of overloaded trucks, for example, causes millions of dollars in damage, as roads now need to be repaired every three years, rather than lasting between seven and ten years.
« When we overload trucks, it causes the state of the road to deteriorate way faster than it’s supposed to. Typically, a road is supposed to be designed for 20 years with some maintenance starting between seven and 10 years. You may have some interventions. What we have recognised is that along roadways closer to quarries, we have to do repairs much faster because of the overloading that takes place. »
He added that the failure to adhere to best practices also has negative effects.
« Oftentimes these trucks, they would come out of the quarries or the illegal quarries without having wheel washes, for example, and material would fall into the drains, wash into the side of the drains, and then ultimately reach into the rivers. And of course, that continues to silt up the river, and there’s the vegetation that takes place as a result, and so forth. So, we spend a lot of money actually desilting waterways, watercourses, cleaning drains. »
He said the lack of adherence to standards can also pose a safety hazard for motorists.
« That material spills onto the roadway and it causes vehicles to have their windscreens broken, etc. And some of those claims actually come back on to the Ministry when, for example, if you’re cleaning in the roadway and a stone, if we’re whackering in an area and a stone hits a vehicle windscreen and it comes back to the Ministry to have some sort of involvement in it. So there’s a safety risk. There is a lot of money that is spent, as I mentioned, in repairs and so forth. »
