The battle continues for Cantabrians whose homes are slowly being surrounded by quarries.
The residents are calling for a minimum setback distance of 500 metres from their properties to the quarry boundaries. In some cases, residents say the distance is less than 100 metres.
It turns out Environment Canterbury (ECan), the Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB) and the Christchurch Mayor, are also in favour of a nationwide ruling on the separation between quarries and homes.
This would be a significant change from the current system whereby the length of the gap is reconsidered every time a resource consent hearing takes place for a new quarry or extension.
The reason the residents want a set minimum distance of 500 metres is that rock-crushing quarries produce a dust called respirable crystalline silica that causes daily symptoms of coughing, along with irritation of the eyes and airways.
The smaller the gap between quarries and homes, the greater the exposure to this dust.
Anna Youngman moved to the Yaldhurst area of Christchurch some 20 years ago when only one small quarry existed.
But in 2014, they began to spring up in every direction. Anna blames this expansion for the symptoms she has most days saying "it's not always coughing up blood, it's mucus and that happens nearly every morning coughing up something".
Her neighbour Dennis Thompson told Fair Go that he's left feeling constantly tired. He suffers from high blood pressure and has doctor's notes that say the poor quality of air is detrimental to his condition.
Dennis says he was warned by his cardiologist "in no uncertain terms that we should shift house if I want to stay alive".
Further down the road, Thomas Emerson shows the thick layers of dust that regularly cover his car and windows.
"They say it doesn't leave the boundary, look at that, it's bulls**t", he adds the dust affects his eyes constantly "running water all the time, dripping... I never used to have that problem, then they show up, and I do have a problem".
Microbiologist Kelvin Duncan isn't surprised. He says coughing is caused by the larger particles of dust, but it's the smaller ones, known as respirable crystalline silica, or RCS, that pose a greater danger.
They're released when greywacke rock gets crushed. These microscopic particles have sharp edges and corners and are known to interfere with lung metabolism. Years of exposure can cause serious disease, in some cases incurable.
Anna Youngman knows all about this, "does it scare me? It terrifies me".
But ECan and The Aggregate and Quarry Association say there's no cause for alarm, saying such long term effects are extremely unlikely at current levels of exposure.
They say all quarries are required to meet dust limits set by councils or the Environment Court. To do this they have measures in place such as thoroughly washing trucks and stopping work when high winds are blowing.
Residents don't feel these measures are enough, and the CDHB admits daily symptoms can be aggravating, with one CDHB officer saying "it's like sandpaper on the back of your throat or your eyeballs".
The community is having to fight each extension one resource consent hearing at a time. There are many hearings, as the need for building materials sky-rocketed after the Christchurch earthquakes.
Residents understand the need for gravel and have no problem with quarries making a living like this, they would just like the quarries to be further away.
This obviously comes down to money, including the issue of the cost of transporting materials to where they're needed. But should those costs come before the community's health?
Soraya Lane, a local with legal training, has taken up the fight for many of her neighbours, saying "there were so many in the community who were deeply affected by this and as soon as heard their stories I knew I had to do something".
She took their fight to the hearings, to the Environment Court, and in one case even to the High Court. In this case, Soraya says "the decision... was absolutely scathing of consents and of residents not being listened to".
There were celebrations over one victory where a quarry that had been given the go-ahead to work within 80 metres of one home was ordered to extend the gap to 500 metres, maintain a full line of trees, and reduce its operating hours.
But in many other instances, the residents haven't been successful. There are eight quarries operating, and more planned. It's for this reason that they're keen to see regulation at a national level.
Their request for a minimum setback distance of 500 metres is currently the requirement in Victoria, Australia for any quarry crushing rock.
In Quebec in Canada it's 600 metres. "In Christchurch for some reason they're allowed to operate within 80 to 100 metres" Soraya explains, "and that's from the house, so 30 metres from their boundary". She adds that this is for homes in a rural zone, they're not even in a quarry zone.
Fair Go approached the Environment Minister David Parker about this, but he refused to do an interview, sending a statement instead that said it was up to each region to make their own decisions.
ECan did agree to front on the issue. Paul Hulse, Zone Delivery Manager, said he understood why residents were so concerned with practices in the past, but wanted to reassure them "they can have confidence with the way we approach this now and the way we engage today".
Although ECan agrees a national standard would be best, with this still not happening, Paul says they are working to help residents however they can.
He says recent testing by independent laboratories show no dangerous levels of RCS at 500 metres from the boundary, and only one at 250 metres from the boundary, over a four month period.
This is not particularly reassuring to residents given some homes are closer than this to the quarries. Also the conditions during the four months of monitoring were questioned.
Residents say it was not particularly wet, there was little wind, and it was over the Christmas period, so quarries weren't operating the whole time. Also, residents say some monitors were found to be covered up.
Despite this, Paul Hulse says that the independent experts were clear that there were enough dry days for the results to be significant.
He adds that he's confident that "what we're doing now is significantly better than three or four years ago". This includes quarry companies voluntarily monitoring boundaries to provide data for ECan to check.
He says spot checks will also be done if complaints of high dust levels are made.
While this is definitely an improvement, residents are far from satisfied.
They'd like access to the dust monitoring data themselves and they're still campaigning for a setback that they feel will help to ensure public health is maintained. Anna Youngman asks the government to "have a heart and stop listening to these quarries and how much money they are making... they will quarry to your backdoor if they're permitted to but it's wrong".
SHARE ME