THE FRIENDS of Great Berry, the organisation welded together to fight plans to reopen old workings near Brierley, believe the last stone has been taken from the quarry.
County councillors will determine the application by businessman Richard Read next week and will do so in the face of a huge outcry against proposals to extract 25,000 tons over the next 15 years.
The opposition has been so fierce that planners have fallen behind in sending out acknowledgements to objectors.
The Friends say 150 people attended their second "information day" last Sunday.
Mr Kelvyn Horsman, a leading objector, said the campaign was not anti-quarrying – the Friends were trying to prevent the re-opening of one small quarry already reclaimed by the forest and were not trying to shut existing quarries elsewhere.
In this instance, he said, profit was being put before people and the environment.
"This is not a kind of New Labour/Old Labour tussle with newcomers pitched against indigenous Foresters – although some would like to present it as that," he said. And it was not anti-Richard Read who had brought many jobs to the area.
"The Friends believe the fundamental issue is that the site is wrong," he said.
Among the points they make, the Friends say there are geological and physical reasons to overturn the proposal as well as concerns about surface and ground water, a nearby landfill site and subsidence.
At the very least, they say, the council should ask for an Environmental Impact Assessment.
The statement ends: "The Friends argue that generations past have helped themselves to the riches of the Dean largely without let or hindrance, but that future generations will be much more cautious about what, when and particularly where permission is granted for industrial activities in general and environmentally intrusive enterprise like quarries in particular.
"They believe that for Great Berry that future has arrived, and that conviction leads them to conclude that the last stone has already been taken from Great Berry."