COMPLAINTS ABOUT HALSWELL QUARRY

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30447, 22 May 1964, Page 1

COMPLAINTS ABOUT HALSWELL QUARRY

Charges that a clay quarry in Hoon Hay Valley owned by the Halswell Clay Company was used as a rifle range and for bottle parties were made in a petition heard at a meeting of the Halswell County Council yesterday. The petition was written by Mrs Naomi Dillon on behalf of eight other valley residents, who had also signed it. The petition asked that the council consider the problems and dangers of the quarry, which was an “eyesore, dangerous, unhealthy, and abounding with noxious weeds.”

Mrs Dillon said she had approached the company asking it to close the entrance with a fence or else to provide the materials for her to erect one.

“The owners seem to have very little interest in the quarry,” she said. Two weeks ago a bulldozer dug a large hole which during the winter would fill with water to become, along with the present pond, a breeding ground for mosquitoes and a source of danger of drowning,

not only for valley children, but for those coming from outside. Mrs Dillon said she had seen children often playing and swimming in the pond. Some were only about four years old, and. had come with the older children. Was it not possible to get some action now, before a child drowned? she asked.

The quarry had been worked with no thought of future catchment problems, and water was pouring down on to the road and the land below.

“1 have put up with parked cars and bottle parties far into the small hours. At least six Sundays last year people were using the quarry as a rifle range,” Mrs Dillon said. The council decided to send a copy of the petition to the company and request it to put up a fence. It also agreed to refer the matter to its solicitors. Recently, it was said, a quarry was ' closed by the Malvern County Council because it was a public nuisance.