 |
 |
home contact sitemap |
| |
|
| |
 |
|
| |
One of the most significant developments over recent years has been The Crown Estate requirement that all vessels dredging on marine aggregate production licences are fitted with an electronic monitoring system (EMS). The EMS automatically records the date, time and position of all dredging activity and this is supplied by operators to The Crown Estate on a monthly basis. Since its introduction in 1993, about 300,000 hours of dredging events, comprising 35 million individual EMS records, have been stored and checked against licence conditions.
BMAPA and The Crown Estate are committed to transparency in reporting the area licensed for dredging at any time. In March 1999 both parties issued a joint statement of intent committing themselves to reviewing all production licence areas over a rolling five year period, surrendering areas no longer containing useful resources of sand and gravel. This included a commitment to publish an annual report detailing the extent of dredging within regional licensed areas using analysis of EMS data.
Every year since 1998, they have jointly produced a report known as the Area Involved, and in 2005, they also published a five-year review report which summarised the period 1998-2002.
| |
Area of
seabed
licensed for
dredging (km2) |
Area available
to be worked
(km2) |
Area dredged
(km2) |
Quantity
dredged
(m tonnes) |
| 1998 |
1,458 |
|
222.6 |
20.47 |
| 1999 |
1,455 |
|
220.3 |
23.68 |
| 2000 |
1,464 |
|
155.4 |
20.68 |
| 2001 |
1,408 |
972 |
150.6 |
22.76 |
| 2002 |
1,359 |
896 |
149.8 |
21.93 |
| 2003 |
1,264 |
890 |
143.8 |
22.23 |
| 2004 |
1,257 |
780 |
134.5 |
21.45 |
| 2005 |
1,179 |
596 |
137.6 |
21.09 |
| 2006 |
1,316 |
576 |
140.6 |
24.18 |
9th Annual Area Involved Report
BMAPA and The Crown Estate have continued their transparent approach to reporting dredging activity with the publication in 2007 of their ninth annual Area Involved report.
Key figures shown in the ninth annual report are as follows. They relate to the 2006 calendar year (2005 equivalents in brackets):
- a total of 24.29 million tonnes of sand and gravel were dredged from Crown Estate licences in England and Wales (21.09 million tonnes)
- the total area of seabed licensed increased to 1,316 km2 (1,179 km2)
- dredging took place within 140.6 km2, 10.7 per cent of the licensed area (137.6 km2 / 11.7 per cent)
- the area of seabed dredged for more than 1 hr 15 minutes per year (high intensity – red on charts) decreased slightly to 8.66 km2 (9.50 km2)
- 90 per cent of dredging from Crown Estate licences took place from an area of 49.19 km2 (45.42 km2).
|
 |
© Quarry Products Association ^ Top
of Page |