Ten years after starting the planning process, Portland limestone producers Albion Stone Quarries have been given permission to mine Portland stone.

But it was a close shave. The planning committee was split evenly and it was only the chairman\'s casting vote coming down in favour of Albion that secured the company the permission they were seeking.

Albion managing director Michael Poultney said he was surprised by the way some of the councillors who had expressed their support for his application to him then voted against it, saying they had concerns.

He said the planning officers had, however, favoured the proposals and the chairman accepted their view.

Albion will start mining in Bowers, which they currently quarry, in the summer next year and move to a new site at Stonehills in 2004. They plan to start developing the Stonehills site in March 2004 and begin production in September that year. They have agreed to stop quarrying Bowers by 2008 and have it fully restored by 2010.

They say all works and amenities at Stonehills will be underground and that the site will be virtually undetectable.

An inevitable concern about any industrial development is the number of lorry movements generated, but Poultney says there will be only five laden lorries leaving the mine each day and that they would be using an \'A\' road currently operating at well below its capacity.

As part of the Stonehills application, Albion offered a wide range of concessions regarding the working and early restoration of their Bowers and Independent quarries. In his report, the Director of Environmental Services described the concessions as a package of significant environmental improvements for the island.

The concessions included the extraction of stone without using explosives and the surrender of millions of tonnes of permitted aggregate reserves to enable the early restoration of the quarries.

Independent will close at the end of next summer. The Portland Sculpture Trust will work with the main secondary school on the island, Royal Manor, to create some works of art in the restored quarry. Albion are working with English Nature on the restoration to create sympathetic environments for a diversity of wildlife.

In anticipation of closing Indepedent - although the factory will remain there - Albion have been moving spoil for the past six months. The aim is to develop part of the site into an area of undulating hills that are more accessible than some of the old quarry workings on Portland.

Albion started using wire saws in their quarries five years ago and added Jet Belts in March last year as they moved away from blasting.

Michael Poultney says: We have invested more than £1/2million in new extraction technologies taking the stone industry on Portland into the 21st century.

My employees have applied themselves over the past five years to ensure that this diamond wire cutting technology is successful. As a direct result we can offer significant environmental improvements in the extraction operation and produce better quality dimension stone blocks for our customers.

He expects that opening the mines will cost about £1/4million. It will be pillar and room mining at an average depth of about of about 20m.

Mining might be expected to be more expensive than quarrying, although it should reduce the 60-70% waste that results from quarrying and, says Poultney, Our consultants have done a whole series of models and, if you believe the results, mining might even be slightly cheaper.

We might not get so many big blocks, but there\'s not that much demand for them anyway.

Albion have the rights to two other quarries on Portland. As part of the current planning application they have given up the rights to one of them, Jordans, which has not been quarried since the 1970s. The other is Admiralty, from which aggregate is produced. That will continue but without blasting.