What Are Some Pros and Cons of Quarrying?
Some of the advantages of quarrying include: creation of job opportunities, creates good landscaping, and income generating avenue. The disadvantages of quarrying include: pollution, loss of settlement sites, and a life hazard to quarry workers. Quarrying is one of the major dominant industries in places where granite, chalk, clay and limestone are found.
Quarries offer the much needed job opportunities in areas where meaningful employment is hard to come by. Quarrying provides an avenue for income generation. The increase in income implies that more money is injected into the local economy. This money can be invested in improving infrastructures such as markets, schools and health care. This leads to improvement of the community welfare. The expansion of quarrying industries means more need for large trucks and lorries, which triggers road improvement. Landscaping of the quarry site after exhausting the quarry product may improve the area’s natural beauty.
Despite the benefits, quarrying also has negative impacts. The blasting needed in extracting the rock contributes greatly to noise pollution. The dust from the rock blasting is a major form of pollution. Roads frequently used by trucks to and fro the quarry industry may be expensive to maintain as they will require regular maintenance. The huge lorries may also block the roads, making it difficult for access by other users. Quarrying interferes with human settlement and wildlife habitat areas, leading to their displacement. Quarrying also leads to death, where workers are be buried by the rocks.