Support the Local Campaign Against Bradley Proposed Open-cast

This years EF! win­ter moot was held in Dip­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, which looks over the pro­posed site for an open-cast at Bradley. Mem­bers of the local cam­paign against the mine have asked if peo­ple who attend­ed the moot, (as well as those who did­n’t) would write in their objec­tion to the devel­op­ment.

This years EF! win­ter moot was held in Dip­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, which looks over the pro­posed site for an open-cast at Bradley. Mem­bers of the local cam­paign against the mine have asked if peo­ple who attend­ed the moot, (as well as those who did­n’t) would write in their objec­tion to the devel­op­ment.

UK Coal’s appli­ca­tion is expect­ed to be heard by the plan­ning offi­cials in the near future. The local cam­paign would appre­ci­ate it if peo­ple would write in let­ters of objec­tion to the fol­low­ing address, stat­ing the APPLICATION No. CMA/1/37

Mrs C.L.Teasdale
Plannng Devel­op­ment Con­trol Team
Regen­er­a­tion and Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment
Durham Coun­ty Coun­cil
Durham
DH1 5UQ

Appar­ent­ly let­ters hold more weight if you say that you have vis­it­ed the area.

The facts about this pro­posed mine:
UK Coal has applied to sur­face mine 556,000 tonnes of coal from a coal seem cov­er­ing 22,000 acres.
The cur­rent ver­sion of the appli­ca­tion is has not yet gone to the Plan­ning Author­i­ty.
The appli­ca­tion is being resist­ed by The Pont Val­ley Net­work www.pontvalley.net
If the appli­ca­tion goes ahead the res­i­dents are par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned about the loss of their her­itage sites.
The final des­ti­na­tion for the coal is either the steel indus­try or a pow­er sta­tion gen­er­at­ing elec­tric­i­ty.
Burn­ing this coal will release over 2 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 being released into the atmos­phere.
UK coal say the mine will cre­ate 38 jobs. Mr Cory of UK Coal says that there will be no new jobs but peo­ple will be trans­ferred to this site.
The mine will need 3 lor­ry trips per hour, each way.
UK coal and oth­er sur­face min­ing com­pa­nies have appli­ca­tions at the plan­ning stages for a fur­ther 13 mines in the area and a fur­ther 5 have been grant­ed in the area.
The near­est planned site also cur­rent­ly at the plan­ning stages is Skons Park, which Hall con­struc­tion are apply­ing to extract half a mil­lion tonnes of coal fire clay. This appli­ca­tion was last refused in 2007 but Halls have since reap­plied this year.

The Bradley site is 10 miles south of New­cas­tle in a beau­ti­ful area. The pro­posed site can be seen from New­cas­tle and Cheviot on a clear day. A mine would scar the land­scape; cause habi­tat destruc­tion which would affect many species, includ­ing Great Crest­ed Newts and Red Kites; con­tribute to glob­al warm­ing; increase traf­fic local­ly and destroy the remains of wag­on-ways and bell pit and shaft mines in the area. Res­i­dents are also con­cerned that if the mine is giv­en the go ahead then they will see fur­ther exten­sions applied for and grant­ed.

For more infor­ma­tion about the site and to add strength to let­ters of objec­tion please see http://pontvalley.net under NOTT cam­paign on the left hand side.