‘We’ve been producing stone all summer and it’s gone pretty well. Certainly the dry weather we’ve had this summer has been a real boon for us,’ he said.
‘A typical good day we’ll do about 500 tonnes of stone, so that’s about 50 trucks’ worth of loads. We’ll eventually go deeper, but we’ve gone about 12 metres deep in the rock at the moment.
‘We’ve got about another 16 metres of depth to go, and that first area is going to last us about another three and a half years.’
For comparison, the now-disused quarry at Les Vardes was approximately 70 metres deep. Les Vardes is now being used as a stockpiling site for excess or aggregate materials, known as overburden, that is excavated while getting down to the stone.
Mr Roussel estimated that up to 40,000 tonnes of overburden from the site have been excavated to date. Around Chouet, the overburdens consist of a sandy clay material, generally up to five metres above the rock.
The stone produced is used mostly on-island, with small quantities sent to Sark or Herm, for making asphalt and mixing concrete.
A typical blast will last the quarry for up to a week and a half, and Mr Roussel says that neighbours in the area have mostly adapted to its daily operations, which has been helped along with communication between them and the company.
However, there has been some concern about the number of vehicles going between Chouet and Les Vardes.
‘Initially, I think they were probably, quite obviously, concerned about what the impact be.
‘But we do work quite hard to try and minimise the impact.
‘We’ve had a couple of people raise concerns about the vehicles transporting it.
‘But again, we do monitor that quite closely.’
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