No campaign to landfill at Moors Valley County Park

Moors Valley Country Park is a significant beauty spot not only for local Ringwood and Verwood residents but for those who visit from further afield becoming one of the most popular parks in the South of England.

 

East Dorset County Council bought the 82 acre Kings Farm estate in 1984 and transformed the site into a popular attraction with 500,000 visitors in 1990 then purchasing an additional 170 acres to develop the golf course and build other facilities for the growing number of visitors to the site.

 

In recent months it has been discovered that there has been a proposal to dig up approximately 700,000 square metres of Moors Valley Park land at a site called 'Purple Haze' for sand and gravel extraction and landfill and a further proposal to expand the Blue Haze landfill at Ebblake Industrial Estate.

 

The site runs along the B3081 so if the plans are approved and go ahead there will be a significant increase in aggregate lorries along this stretch of road as the site is expected to yield upto 250,000 tonnes of sand and gravel a year.

 

The work is expected to take 10 to 15 years to complete then the land is expected to be 'restored' to public land space.

 

This proposal has outraged a group of residents in Verwood so much that they set up a website for all to access giving people all the information and gaining support to stop this project from ever happening. Hampshire County Council will be the ones that make this final decision.

 

The www.no2purplehaze.co.uk campaign needs local support as this valued beauty spot is used by thousands of people each year, is a conservation and wildlife habit for many animals and birds and the site itself is deemed far too close to a residential area of Verwood.

 

The public consultation period closed on 13th April but the details of the proposal were not known to many of the Verwood residents until after this phase.

 

The council will set out a plan now and will get the plan reviewed by independent experts before agreeing their course of action.

 

If you wish to make you comments known about this proposal then you can email the council directly on planning.policy@hants.gov.uk or the group lobbying the council on notoph@btinternet.com.

 

I live on the edge of Moors Valley Country Park and use the B3081 often and will certainly be supporting this group of residents push the council into finding an alternative location for this project. I understand that this work will be necessary but Moors Valley Country Park is certainly not the right location for this work to take place.