Allowing a quarry and cement works to replace the green fields of Bridge Farm will change Arborfield and its surrounds forever.
Let’s be clear. Anyone that votes in favour of the CEMEX application will bear that responsibility.
Whatever assessments, predictions and assertions are contained in the devil of the detail of the endless CEMEX response to all the flaws in their original application, it is simply a lie to suggest that this rolling farmland will ever be truly restored to its current natural beauty.
Never mind the years and years of industrial noise and cement dust that will alter the entire feel of a community in which we educate our children and care for our elderly, never mind the hundreds of extra heavy goods vehicle journeys that will join the school and commuter traffic on rural roads, never mind the loss of beautiful landscape and footpaths to the scar of a quarry… never mind the here and now transformation of an area in the name of producing ‘essential’ concrete.
This is an all-time change to the place where we live and where villagers have lived for centuries. Any such decision carries a heavy burden on those that take it.
Those of us that fervently believe that this is a massive leap too far in the evolution of Arborfield and Shinfield as modern communities must not only dig deep and shout loud in order to point out all of the many life-changing issues these proposals raise, we have a duty to the future of these villages to make absolutely sure that those with the final say know and see with their own eyes what they are voting on.
No councillor should even contemplate taking on that responsibility without reading and understanding every single word of the CEMEX submission and the continuing objections to it… without spending a considerable amount of research time here in our villages, looking at the land, visiting the local homes, schools and care homes and listening to our concerns… without surveying the CEMEX operation in Eversley and the land they have ‘restored’ in Finchampstead (see images above).
If WBC allow Arborfield to join that list, there will be no turning back. Ever.
Please play your active part in helping them get this momentous decision right. Now or never.
Article by Clive T