NOISE, dust, and 160 lorry movements a day could blight the village of Burton if gravel extraction is allowed to take place on its doorstep, claim residents.

More than 200 householders from Burton and Winkton flooded into St Luke’s Church Hall to inspect Dorset County Council’s gravel plans from 2011 to 2026 Bodorgan Properties (CI) Ltd wants to dig between 200,000 and 250,000 tonnes of sand and gravel a year from 74 hectares of prime Avon Valley farmland between Hawthorn Lane and Watery Lane.

That amounts to a total 3.5 million tonnes from the site during the 15-year life of the pit.

Watery Lane is on the county boundary, but to the east of that is a large potential gravel extraction site in Hampshire.

Access to both sites will be via a haul road which will join the A35 at the existing Cat and Fiddle “pick your own” entrance near Hinton.

Burton Parish Council chairman Cllr Judy Jamieson said: “In the main there was wholesale astonishment that they had failed to illustrate on their display the Hampshire site which, together with the proposed Dorset site, would mean an area of some 161 hectares, which would mean 7.5 million tonnes.

“Villagers were highly critical of the proposals and raised numerous issues, which included the impact the extraction would have on the whole area and the major increase in traffic which would result from the sites.”

Why had the “roadshow” been put on from noon until 3pm which meant anyone in business was unable to attend? asked Cllr Jamieson.

She also claimed there had been a lack of publicity and the only reason people attended was because the parish put leaflets through letterboxes. In addition, there were not enough consultation documents and response forms to take home.

Dorset County Council minerals group manager Peter White agreed that including Hampshire’s plans for Roeshot “would have provided a more complete picture” but was outside the group’s remit.

A full-page advertisement was taken out in Your Dorset which goes through every door in the county; an evening meeting had taken place at Hurn on November 6; many people had taken away leaflets for others; and all information was online.