Say no to purple haze

'Say no to purple haze'  is a group fighting to protect a country park from plans to turn it into a quarry.

In her own words Britt tells us about the campaign and fight to save an area loved by the local community.

"I vividly remember the day I first heard about Purple Haze. It was 15 April 2011, my neighbour knocked on my door to tell me that the sale of her property had fallen through because the buyers discovered Hampshire County Council’s (HCC’s) plans to build an enormous quarry (called Purple Haze) in the nearby Moors Valley County Park. This was news that would completely change my life.

Later that afternoon my husband and I went to the park to see where it would be built. We stood there looking at the area in absolute shock. Purple Haze is proposed to be a 700,000-meter sq gravel quarry and landfill site. It was impossible to imagine it whilst we looked on at this beautiful park less than 500 meters from our home in Verwood.

Moors Valley has over 800,000 visitors each year making it the third most visited county park in the UK. Visit England has listed it in its top three attractions and it has two SSSIs within its county boundary, including a rare acid mire.

No one can confirm that quarrying won’t have an impact on the hydrology of the area, which may cause flooding and damage to the nearby SSSI bog. The Crane River and lakes support 27 species of dragonfly and damselfly, which are likely to be affected by increased levels of pollution. It will take 30 years to quarry the land and another 30 years to restore it."