CHURT villagers are uniting against a bid to triple landfill activities at Stockstone Quarry.

SITA, which already operates many landfill sites in the Farnham area, has applied to the Environment Agency for an amendment to its licence which would allow it to fill the quarry with 1,500 tons of non-hazardous rubble a day, up from its current 500 tons.

SITA, then AJ Bull, won its current licence at the High Court in the 1980s to much uproar among villagers.

Mike and Hilary Wagstaff, whose Hyde Lane house backs onto the quarry and fronts the lorries' Tilford Road route, have urged all nearby residents to write to the Environment Agency with their objections.

Mrs Wagstaff estimates that if SITA's licence is amended, the number of lorries using the narrow Tilford Road will increase from the current 30-to-35 to 90-to-100 and that this would work out at 200 passages of 30-40 ton lorries a day.

Mrs Wagstaff, who has a two-year-old daughter, says even the current landfill activities are a traffic hazard, particularly in an area with young families, and that they create noise and pollution and that trucks destroy road banks.

She is angry that she only found out about the planning application by accident, claiming that the Environment Agency is under no obligation to let residents know - though it did write to a member of the Quarry Action Group in the village.

With the deadline for objections this Sunday (May 12) she is asking for the application's on-going two-month consultation period to be extended so that villagers can make their voices heard.

She has been told by an Environment Agency officer there is likely to be an extension of two to four weeks.

In a letter to the Environment Agency, Mrs Wagstaff writes: "We live in a borough where it is impossible to make any alterations to your house without being put through the wringer, notify all your neighbours and post a bright yellow notice on the outside of your house before you can do any work.

"Yet this change of use at Stockstone Quarry will have a much more significant impact on our home, safety and quality of life and approximately 1,000 other residents of Tilford Road, yet can apparently get through by stealth."

Mrs Wagstaff says the tripling of the current dumping rate would make life "intolerable".

Anyone wanting to object to SITA's bid, application WA/121, can write to Louise Thomlinson at the Environment Agency, Swift House, Camberley GU16 7SQ.