Rock quarry development and exploitation may result in extensive environmental impacts, but those impacts has not been investigated yet. Although most of quarry exploitation plans were initiated in a local region by individual permissions for small scale developments, those were eventually extended for being expanded. However, the expanding has been arbitrarily conducted without considering overall environmental impacts in the region, resulting in break-down of regional ecological axis and other serious environmental damages. Furthermore, no action for environmental pollution prevention leads to serious environmental impacts. Some of quarry developers have interest only in making profits, and has not often paid attention to restoration after the exploitations. Quarry developments without considering environmental impacts devast adjacent rivers by suspended solids and surrounding environments by dust scattered from the rock quarries. Suspended solid generation per unit area of quarry is 2.6 to 38.5 times higher than other developments such as golf course, industrial and residential complexes. The total suspended solid generation of quarry is also 2.5 to 9.9 times higher than those of other developments.
This study was focused on environmental impacts of quarry development upon sediment accumulation and running water ecosystem. In the study, four sites were selected to survey and investigate characteristics of sediments and changes in aquatic macroinvertebrate community. The results showed that quarry development gave serious effects on water quality and ecological life of