First coal mined from foot of The Wrekin
Thursday 25th November 2010, 11:34AM GMT.
The first coal has been mined from the foot of the Wrekin, it was confirmed today.
And UK coal bosses said the first lorry load of coal could be leaving the open cast mine, near Telford, to fuel power stations by the end of the year.
The firm said it had already found a coal seam on the site in Little Wenlock, near The Wrekin, and had started to extract the fossil fuel.
Stuart Oliver, UK Coal spokesman, said the first coal could be transported from the 230-acre Huntington Lane site in a “matter of weeks”.
He said: “In the next few weeks we may be taking the first coal from the site to power stations. The coal seam has been intercepted. We have now located the coal seam. They have removed the soil lying over the seam.
“It is very shallow. it is the shallowest of the areas to be worked on, probably tens of feet down.”
He said they wanted to build up a stockpile of coal supplies before transporting it.
The firm has permission to mine 900,000 tonnes of coal from the site.
Mr Oliver said the work was going to plan despite the delayed start so they could meet all the conditions of the planning approval.
He said: “We started work on the site within days of the 40 conditions attached to the planning consent having been signed off with Telford & Wrekin Council.”
The firm has also had to deal with protesters who set up camp on the site more than seven months ago. The campaigners have been told by residents to “go home”.
Resident Peter Whittle, from the Huntington Lane Surface Mine Community Liaison Group, which acts as a go-between for residents, the parish council and UK Coal, had said locals had had enough and felt the protesters were an “irritation”. But protesters have said they will stay.
By Lisa Rowley
UK News
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goodbye to another part of our dwindling beautiful green landscape.
hello dirty great holes,construction sites & unsightly concrete blandness.
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Goodbye to the deer that wander down as far as Lawley from these ancient woods. Hello tomorrows Brookside.
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So there’s such an abundance of coal at this precious site, that it’s going to take til the end of the year to fill the first lorry load….how strange…it sounds like a land clearing excercise, to build houses, to me, more so than a productive coal site.
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Oh no how can they destroy a beautiful part of the country, I walked the Wrekin 2 years ago and stayed in cottage at the bottom of Wrekin. The Wrekin has all this nature, views etc. It desperately needs to be made into a National park and preserved for future generations. Stop the rape of the English countryside.
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Peter Whittle calls the protestors ‘irrational’? How can he call them irrational when the Royal Society, the highest scientific body in the country, has just published a series of articles warning of a four degree warming world on present coal-burning trends. If Mr. Whittle has children or grandchildren who will live to see the year 2060, then they will experience a climate no Englishman or woman has experienced in recorded history. So Mr. Whittle, it it irrational to worry about such things? Read what the Royal Society has to say. And if you don’t, shame on you.
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/site/2011/four_degrees.xhtml
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Actually, JJB, Mr Whittle called them an ‘irritation’.
But I wouldn’t be too harsh on Mr Whittle. He is only defending his interests as he sees them, and his reaction is understandable bearing in mind how the issue of climate change is framed generally in the media and how frequently protesters are given verbal kickings on threads on this site by anonymous bloggers.
Back on the subject of ‘irritation’ did you see what top NASA climatologist, James Hansen, said about it in Nottingham Crown Court on Monday 29th November 2010.
Hansen was acting as an expert witness in a trial of 20 climate change activists, accused of conspiracy to trespass at E.ON’s coal plant at Ratcliffe-on-Soar last Easter.
Hansen told the court, in defence of the activists, that he could understand young people’s sense of anger and irritation.
“The fact that we continue to burn more coal and build more coal plants shows governments are not telling the truth. If they are saying they understand the climate problem but will continue to burn coal it’s easy for me to understand that young people get upset, because they know governments are lying or kidding themselves.”
In view of the fact that this mine was pushed through against cross-party, local opposition by the last Labour government, surely the strategic decision-makers in government should be the target of our irritation and anger, rather than local individuals, who certainly don’t speak for everyone (See http://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2010/11/17/video-evas-fears-over-open-cast-mine-works/).
Why is central government ignoring what the Royal Society says?
And what about the role of the media?
It would be really interesting to know why -in the week of the Cancun Climate Change Summit -only one national newspaper reported what James Hansen told Nottingham Crown Court 2 days ago?
Hansen: “We are going to have to leave fossil fuels in the ground. The biggest one to leave in the ground is coal.”
What do you think, JJB?
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