Res­i­dents of Mara­cas Val­ley, St Joseph, yes­ter­day ex­pressed out­rage over the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an­oth­er quar­ry start­ing op­er­a­tions in their com­mu­ni­ty.

Dur­ing a con­sul­ta­tion on the mat­ter at the Mara­cas Val­ley Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, res­i­dents vent­ed their anger at the pos­si­bil­i­ty, al­though a Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC) has not yet been award­ed for any such op­er­a­tion. They said hav­ing a sec­ond quar­ry in the area would de­stroy the en­vi­ron­ment and in­ter­fere with the traf­fic lo­gis­tics in the area.

Coos­al's Con­struc­tion al­ready op­er­ates a lime­stone quar­ry in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Pres­i­dent of the Acono Vil­lage Dy­nam­ic Ac­tion Com­mit­tee (AV­DAC), Sime­on Nakhid, said Blue Di­a­mond En­gi­neer­ing Ltd wants to es­tab­lish a lime­stone quar­ry at La Cau­ri­ta Es­tate, Mara­cas, St Joseph. Caribbean Quar­ries Ltd, he said, had al­so ap­plied for a CEC but was asked to re-ap­ply. This means that there would be two quar­ries in the area if Blue Di­a­mond En­gi­neer­ing Ltd were to be grant­ed a CEC, Nakhid said.

But Nakhid said res­i­dents are against any such op­er­a­tions be­cause the in­tegri­ty of the road would be de­stroyed and hav­ing a sec­ond quar­ry in the area would al­so in­ter­fere with the traf­fic lo­gis­tics there.

"The road is so nar­row that a car could bare­ly pass, much less for a truck. There are 22 bridges which have to be built over," he said, adding that when there is no wa­ter in the taps res­i­dents go to the near­by riv­er and a sec­ond quar­ry in the area would al­so de­stroy the nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment in the com­mu­ni­ty.

In a let­ter dat­ed June 7, 2016, ad­dressed to Deb­bie Reyes, study man­ag­er at Eco-en­gi­neer­ing Con­sul­tants Ltd, which is the com­pa­ny work­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Blue Di­a­mond En­gi­neer­ing Ltd, Nakhid said: "We would like to com­mu­ni­cate from the heart of the Acono Com­mu­ni­ty that no good will come of this pro­posed quar­ry, nor the quar­ry pro­posed by Caribbean Quar­ries Ltd."

Nakhid, high­light­ing con­cerns of the res­i­dents, said some of the is­sues with hav­ing a sec­ond quar­ry in­clude in­crease in noise and dust, de­cline in pub­lic safe­ty, de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of wa­ter qual­i­ty, in­crease in traf­fic con­ges­tion, de­te­ri­o­rat­ing road con­di­tions, loss of aes­thet­ics, even less recre­ation and dis­ap­pear­ance of wildlife.

In that let­ter, he al­so sug­gest­ed that the group might seek le­gal ac­tion.

"Should your client (Blue Di­a­mond En­gi­neer­ing Ltd) de­cide to pro­ceed af­ter hav­ing sight of the com­mu­ni­ty's po­si­tion and en­gage you to pre­pare the En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact As­sess­ment (EIA), then be as­sured that like we did in 2008, we will seek le­gal ad­vice on your fail­ure to have ex­tend­ed suf­fi­cient time for us to mean­ing­ful­ly com­ment on the Terms of Ref­er­ence. The EIA, when com­plete, will al­so be chal­lenged on the ba­sis of over­whelm­ing neg­a­tive so­cial and en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts af­fect­ing our con­sti­tu­tion­al rights."