Slide 1

Impacts of crushed rock quarries on historic villages and cultural landscapes Gemma Marchant 1, Nigel Blades 1 and Paul Greening 2 1 UCL Centre for Sustainable Heritage 2 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, UCL Presented by Nigel Blades UCL CENTRE FOR SUSTAINABLE HERITAGE Slide 2 Project details Funded by English Heritage through Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund Partners UCL Centre for Sustainable Heritage UCL Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering British Geological Survey (subcontractor) 12 month project: June 2005 May 2006 Slide 3 Project aims Investigate the impact of noise, dust and vibration from crushed rock production and transportation on historic built environment (villages, buildings, their interiors and collections) Methodology Consultation with stakeholders (English Heritage, local authorities, quarry operators) Investigation of 2 Case study locations Slide 4 Selection of project case-study sites West Dorset and the Isle of Portland The Yorkshire Dales South Derbyshire Dene Quarry Permission to extract 850 000 tonnes crushed limestone per year Slide 5 Impacts of Aggregates Extraction to be Investigated Noise - In high levels can impact on the amenity of an area for visitors and residents Vibration - Can cause several types of damage to Historic Buildings and Monuments Dust - Is known to cause excessive soiling on building exteriors and can also lead to chemical attack on some materials. Slide 6 Measurement methods Real time measurements: Grimm optical particle counter size-resolved measurements of airborne dust at 1 minute intervals Passive sampling sticky samplers used to collect deposited dust inside and outside buildings for 4-6 weeks. Electron microscopy with automated image analysis used to identify mineral components Slide 7 Real-time particle measurements by Grimm optical particle counter, comparison of working days and weekends Slide 8 Comparison of outdoor and indoor dust samples Outdoor sticky sampler representative image, 14 North Street, Cromford Indoors sticky sampler representative image, 14 North Street, Cromford Slide 9 West View outdoor samples (summer) Many calcite particles were sharp- edged as if cleaved by mechanical processing Others were weathered, showing signs of pitting and erosion, possibly from rainwater. Quarry access road dust was similar to this material. Slide 10 Sources of possibly damaging vibration Slide 11 Test set up Sound intensity logger Geophone with data logger near foundations Video camera indoors Second sound intensity readout indoors Slide 12 How much ground-borne vibration is too much? Siskind et al. German Code Swiss Code Lloyd and Mullany Watts et al. Thickett 0.5mms -1 0.375mms -1 Slide 13 Noise measurements - 101 Cromford Hill LA eq (dB) Time (s) WHO guideline for noise outdoor annoyance 55 LA eq (dB) Slide 14 Noise measurements - 2 Bransghyll, Horton LA eq (dB) Time (s) Slide 15 Summary of preliminary findings Main outdoor dust source at Horton and Cromford is limestone or limestone bearing soils Unlikely to cause damage to buildings apart from soiling nuisance; could be hazard to indoor collections as soiling, abrasion, chemically reactive Airborne dust levels on quarry operating day significantly higher than at the weekend Vibration from both blasting and transportation by quarry wagons far below level expected to cause damage to delicate structures Noise is a significant intrusion at Cromford, less so at Horton Slide 16 Further work Can we related outdoor dust and noise more directly to quarry and other road traffic? Traffic counting data Quarry wagon data Passive sampler data How do particle distributions outdoors relate to indoors? Vertical profile of deposition (measurements at 0.2, 1, 2m) Investigate influence of wind and weather conditions Assess transport distances from sources