| |
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. In 2005, they published a five-year review report which summarised the period 1998-2002 and in 2009 they published a ten-year review report which summarised the period 1998-2007.
| |
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 |
| 2007 |
1,344 |
556 |
135 |
23.09 |
| 2008 |
1278 |
570 |
138 |
21.24 |
Area involved ten-year review (1998-2007)
In November 2009, BMAPA and The Crown Estate published a ten-year review of the area involved initiative.
The review reports on trends across three key areas:
Area licensed
- The area of seabed licensed decreased by a net 387.09km2, with the greatest reductions occurring within 12nm of the coast.
- 749.84km2 of licensed area was surrendered.
- 362.44km2 of new area was licensed, the majority of which was beyond 12nm.
Area dredged
- The area of seabed dredged in a single year ranged from 222.60km2 in 1998 to 134.51km2 in 2004.
Cumulative footprint
- The total area of seabed dredged between 1998 and 2007 amounted to 463.71km2, of which 54.52 km2 (11.76 per cent) is no longer licensed.
- The area of new seabed dredged annually has reduced from 75.44km2 in 1999 (34 per cent of the total area) to 11.79km2 in 2007 (8.76 per cent of the total area).
- Over the full ten-year period (1998-2007), the average area of new seabed dredged each year was 26.79km2, however during the most recent five-year period (2003-2007) this figure has reduced to 16.73km2/year.
- A total of 221.215 million tonnes of marine sand and gravel was dredged from Crown Estate licence areas between 1998 and 2007. Averaged across the cumulative footprint, this represents 29cm of sediment being removed across the entire area dredged – equivalent to a single pass of a drag head.
Area involved 11th annual report (2008)
Summary information from the 11th annual report, also published in November 2009, is as follows. They relate to the 2008 calendar year (2007 equivalents in brackets)
Summary information
- A total of 21.24 million tonnes of sand and gravel were dredged from Crown Estate licences in England and Wales during 2008 (23.09 million tonnes
- The total area of seabed licensed in 2008 decreased to 1,278km2 (1,344km2)
- Dredging took place within 137.9km2, 10.8 per cent of the licensed area, compared to 134.7km2 (10.0 per cent) in 2007
- The area of seabed dredged for more than 1 hr 15 minutes per year (high intensity – red on charts) decreased to 9.28km2 (10.16km2)
- 90 per cent of dredging from Crown Estate licences took place from an area of 48.22km2 (49.95km2).
|