Last Friday evening, I received an alarming email about the installation of a quarry several kilometers away from O’Vineyards. The email said I had until Monday to respond.
Given the lack of detail and the strange time of delivery of the email, I panicked and posted on the blog. Some of you have graciously offered help with researching this installation.
Iris from Domaine Lisson discovered an avis from the regional prefecture on the Direction Regionale de l’Environnement, de l’Amenagement et du Logement website.
The avis addresses environmental concerns for the surrounding area of Villemoustaussou and concludes that everything seems to be taken into account. With a few further precautions, they say the project should be allowed to continue.
The biggest issues are the usual impacts of quarries (?!), noise pollution for the direct neighborhood, traffic from the trucks and impact of that traffic on the countryside, to which we can add (due to the location of the project),
Excuse the poorly translated legalese. This is the best I can do.
The avis goes on to explain that most of this has been taken into account.
The full French text, as above, is available on the official government site.
Other online friends have assured me that a project several kilometers away will be pretty much invisible from O’Vineyards. They say similar projects in the environs of vineyards cause no noise pollution or dust clouds.
Having read the report, I see that there are houses less than 50 meters away from the site. I imagine that the dust and noise aren’t a big deal or they would be clamoring. However now that I’m researching concrete production and quarries, I’m getting worried about the water table!
The good news is that this is not a concrete processing plant or manufacture or whatever you call it. They take the stone and materials here and drive them to Valmy where they are already allowed to process the stuff. The bad news is that it can still cause fluctuations in the flow of the alluvial aquifer.
This whole project is a few kilometers downhill from me. Does a change in the aquifer draw down there mean that the water table higher up will drain faster or slower? Or will I be unaffected?
I don’t know enough about geology and rainfall to know how that affects the vineyard. I’ll continue looking into it. I guess I have like one day left to research.