At a meeting in March convened by the NSW Department of Planning they argued that doubling Hanson’s Brandy Hill Quarry to allow 1.5 million tonnes of stone to be quarried would make crashes at the intersection almost inevitable.

While an environmental impact statement found the intersection provided “a suitable level of road safety”, Brandy Hill residents including Margarete and Neil Ritchie said drivers travelling at 100kph on Clarence Town Road had only six seconds to respond to trucks leaving or entering the quarry at the intersection because of the crest of a hill.

The fatal crash on Thursday, where two cars collided at the intersection and police are investigating whether the dead man’s car did not stop at a stop sign, left residents who filmed the site last week shocked and sickened.

“It was going to happen. We knew it was going to happen,” said Mrs Ritchie.

More than 160 individuals and groups have lodged objections to Hanson’s plans to more than double production at the quarry which has operated since 1983, allow 24-hour operations, build a concrete batching plant and receive up to 20,000 tonnes of concrete waste per year for recycling.

A traffic report released with the company’s environmental impact statement in February said the quarry, 12 kilometres north of Raymond Terrace, could increase “the total traffic generation from the site to 904 vehicle traffic per day or 150 vehicle traffic per hour” during peak times.

The Intersect Traffic report said the Clarence Town Road/Brandy Hill Drive intersection “appears to have limited sight distance to the east”.

“The safe intersection sight distance for 100kph speed zoning is 230 metres desirable, with a minimum of 205 metres. Sight distance to the east at the intersection was observed to be at the minimum requirement,” Intersect Traffic said.

Traffic accident data showed five crashes within a 500 metre radius of the intersection within the past six years, including one fatality, with only one crash at the intersection itself. No crashes involved quarry trucks.

It recommended increasing road safety by reducing the Clarence Town Road speed limit to 80kph.

At a meeting on March 22 involving the Department of Planning, Brandy Hill and Seaham Action Group and Brandy Hill Quarry representatives, action group member Deb Fisher spelt out residents’ concerns about the intersection.

“There is insufficient time for a car to stop when a truck is passing through the Clarence Town Road and Brandy Hill Drive intersection,” she said.

While it took a loaded truck and trailer up to 20 seconds to cross the intersection from a standing start at the stop sign leading from the quarry, cars travelling at 100kph on Clarence Town Road towards the intersection had only six seconds to brake after cresting a hill at which the intersection became visible.

“There are safety concerns not only for residents but the truck drivers themselves,” Mrs Fisher said.

Mrs Ritchie said she was invited to spend a day with a truck driver several years ago when the quarry’s increasing operations caused alarm for residents because of the number of trucks using Brandy Hill Drive.

“The first thing we did was pull out of the intersection and the truck driver said to me ‘This is where I start praying’ because they pull out and cars crest the hill at speed and the trucks can’t drive any faster,” Mrs Ritchie said.

Residents strongly opposed increasing the quarry’s operating hours from 6am to 6pm to 24 hours a day, and said the combined impact of an expanded Brandy Hill Quarry and an expanded Martins Creek Quarry on roads that were not designed to accommodate hundreds of heavy truck movements a day would make the area inherently unsafe.

A record of the March 22 meeting shows Department of Planning team leader Colin Phillips told residents that “at this time it is agreed that the current intersection analysis (including the Clarence Town Road/Brandy Hill Drive intersection) is not sufficient”.

Mr Phillips also agreed that bus stops along Brandy Hill Drive where Brandy Hill and Martins Creek quarry trucks travel were “not big enough”, which Mrs Ritchie described as an understatement.

“The increase in truck traffic is enormous. The current 340 trucks per day will be increased by 505 to 844 truck movements per day. At peak this will be 110 trucks per hour,” Mrs Ritchie said.

“Add to this the same number of truck movements from Martins Creek Quarry with its proposal of 1.5million and you can see that the residents of Brandy Hill Drive will find it very hard to exist.”

In its environmental impact statement Hanson said the truck movements would have low to moderate impact on residents.

Hanson has identified more than 78 million tonnes of available material within the proposed new extraction area of more than 78 hectares.

”The ability to continue supplying the Hunter region with products from Brandy Hill Quarry ensures a competitive market in the region. The high cost of transporting materials creates the need for quarries to be in close proximity to large existing markets, such as the Newcastle, Hunter and Central Coast areas,” Hanson said.

The crash on Thursday was “very sad”, and its traffic report had been independently assessed, a Hanson spokesman said.

First appeared on the Newcastle Herald