Gravel is urgently needed as a building material, so there is no avoiding new quarrying areas. However, it is important to distribute the burden of transport as fairly as possible.
The dilemma is obvious: on the one hand, construction should be going on everywhere, the housing shortage is omnipresent, and new schools are also needed. And since you need gravel to build, the quarrying of the stones is a privileged right that municipal bodies cannot object to – the decision-making power lies with the district office.
In Höhenkirchen-Siegertsbrunn, they have since considered taking legal action against the plant on the Muna site on the border with Hohenbrunn, but ruled out the option because, according to local councilor Otto Bußjäger, it would have been as promising as Russian roulette with a full magazine. And so at least a few concessions were wrested from the entrepreneur, one of which above all corresponds to the old St. Florian’s motto: The trucks that transport the gravel should not roll through our community, but through the neighboring community.
A fact that naturally does not go down well in Hohenbrunn. The fact that a ban on heavy goods vehicles has now been obtained for Luitpoldstrasse is on the one hand a step in the right direction in order not to expose residential areas and school routes to the burden of the many trucks. On the other hand, this ban has not yet been enforced, which is also due to the fact that the gravel pit is not yet in operation. The alternative to Luitpoldstraße is no less problematic, and Dorfstraße is also a busy place in the morning with many elementary school students – Hohenbrunn’s Mayor Stefan Straßmair (CSU) is worried about the high accident potential.
But what choice does the municipality and the district office have? Perhaps gravel quarrying should only be approved where the framework conditions are right? It’s hard to imagine that there will then be enough pits to meet demand. De-prioritize? That would go in the same direction, given the lack of living space in the district of Munich it would hardly be politically justifiable. Or you make compromises, for example through increased noise protection or speed limits on particularly busy roads, as Straßmair is now proposing. In any case, it would be important to work together to find solutions to this difficult issue and not always just try to be smart about it yourself, regardless of how hard your own decisions may be for the neighboring municipalities.