Environmental Challenges of Quarry Activities in Part of Ikere-Ekiti, Ekiti state, Nigeria

This paper examined the environmental challenges of quarry activities in part of Ikere-Ekiti, Ekiti state on the workers, community residents and the environment. Two different locations were visited within the study area for the purpose of this work. One hundred and thirty (130) structured questionnaires were equally administered within the two locations randomly on the workers and community residents to collect relevant data and information, out of which one hundred and five (105) were returned. The results were presented on tables and the data were analyzed using percentage distribution. It was observed that the effects of noise from the quarry operations and vibrations from rock blasting were serious and of major concern as about 70 % of the respondents attested to this. The impact of air pollution/dust generation and destruction of biodiversity are relatively less serious as only between 20 35 % of the respondents rated these issues as serious. The other environmental issues which are river siltation/farm flooding, pollution of water sources and degradation of farm land and roads were perceived to be absent or insignificant as more than 60 % of the total respondents confirmed this. The workers in the quarries were the most affected by noise, vibrations from rock blasting and air pollution/dust generation, other environmental issues majorly affected the residents of the communities in the study area. In order to ensure full compliance to acceptable standards, the quarry owners, community residents and government should jointly be involved in regularly monitoring the activities of the quarries.