A campaign group set up to protect Shropshire’s landmark hill has joined the rising tide of protest against plans for opencast coal mining on the western edge of Telford.Members of All Friends Round The Wrekin urged the public to bombard Telford & Wrekin Council with objections to UK Coal’s proposals.
They oppose the plan to extract 900,000 tonnes of coal from Huntington Lane, New Works. They say it would destroy precious countryside, shatter the quality of life for people in the area and harm their health.
UK Coal’s proposal - due to be considered by the borough council - was the hot topic for debate at a Friends public meeting in Wellington last night.
Speaker after speaker at the 70-strong gathering stressed the importance of letting the council know the strength of feeling.
Anti-mining campaigner Pat Johnson said visitors came from all over the country to visit The Wrekin and its Ercall neighbour.
He said: “How will they feel when they look across our wonderful landscape and see this boil on the bottom of this place of beauty?”
Mr Johnson won applause when he urged people to rouse themselves from apathy and get their objections in to Telford & Wrekin Council - to david.coxill@ telford.gov.uk - before the consultation deadline runs out in three weeks’ time.
Councillor Pat Fairclough, a former mayor of Wellington, said: “This is the lung of Telford and we don’t want it polluted.”
She said the constant threat of mining had caused a cumulative planning blight, putting a dampener on the housing market.
Former Friends chairman George Chancellor, of Little Wenlock, said the issue was likely to go to a public inquiry as UK Coal was making a bid for up to 30 similar opencast applications around the country.
Plans by National Grid Wireless to erect a temporary mast on The Wrekin and extend the concrete track up the hill as part of the switch to digital TV also sparked opposition.
Speakers said local stone should be used on the track, and Friends president George Evans described the existing mast as a travesty and called for it to be removed.
He said the mast and track already went far beyond original planning permission granted in 1972.
2 Comments
Those concerned about health effects of opencast mining need to hold a public meeting with Dr Dick van Steenis speaking.
Kenfig Hill is a huge opencast works near Bridgend and the health effects have been horrendous with elevated rates of asthma and now three suicides which are part of the “Bridgend suicide cluster” that has had massive media coverage without any paper realising that depression is linked to industrial PM2.5 emissions.
Dr van Steenis spoke at Pyle two years ago to help prevent the extension of the Kenfig Hill opencast works and Carwen Jones AM was in the audience and he refused to believe what Dr van Steenis told the meeting. Carwen Jones has done a U-turn on opencasting as he now realises what a terrible price is to be paid in terms of health.
I suggest that the action group gets the facts from Dr van Steenis who has been successful in beating UK Coal on previous occasions and they will not want history to repeat itself in Shropshire.
There has now been a fourth probable suicide near the Kenfig Hill opencast site and in 2005.
Two clusters of suicides in Carolina, USA, were proved to be linked to industrial PM2.5 emissions and the study was published in 2005.
Gnosall & other parts of Staffs & Telford have experienced suicides linked to industrial PM2.5s.