Oppostion to Telford opencast mine plans continue… [updated: blog for updates]

6.03.2010
CAMPAIGNERS AGAINST UK COALS HUNTINGTON LANE SURFACE MINE were out on the bridges of Telford this morn­ing, equipped with a large ban­ner broad­cast­ing their mes­sage of ‘No New Coal’. The open­cast coal site near New Works in Telford is due to com­mence oper­a­tions in the near future.

Telford No New Coal banner 16.03.2010
CAMPAIGNERS AGAINST UK COALS HUNTINGTON LANE SURFACE MINE were out on the bridges of Telford this morn­ing, equipped with a large ban­ner broad­cast­ing their mes­sage of ‘No New Coal’. The open­cast coal site near New Works in Telford is due to com­mence oper­a­tions in the near future.

In 2007 UK Coal sub­mit­ted plans to Telford and Wrekin Coun­cil to open cast mine 900,000 tons of poor qual­i­ty coal from an area at the foot of the Wrekin in Telford over 32 months. The plans includ­ed destroy­ing parts of an ancient wood­land and will be respon­si­ble for a min­i­mum of 1,500,000 tonnes of CO2 emit­ted into the atmos­phere. The Wrekin is an Area of Out­stand­ing Nat­ur­al Beau­ty

After strong local oppo­si­tion the appli­ca­tion was sub­mit­ted to a plan­ning inspec­torate and late last year the Sec­re­tary of State, John Den­ham back­ing the plan­ning inspec­tor found in favour of UK Coal and the open cast coal mine has been approved.

UK Coal have said they will return the site to green fields once the min­ing has fin­ished. Jon Lloyd the chief exec­u­tive of UK Coal spent most of his career in the prop­er­ty devel­op­ment busi­ness before join­ing UK Coal.

The 230 acre site is part of the Shrop­shire Hills Area of Out­stand­ing Nat­ur­al Beau­ty and is also home to the pro­tect­ed sched­uled New Works Ancient Mon­u­ment.

A spokesper­son for the cam­paign­ers said “We believe that burn­ing coal to gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty is an anti­quat­ed and out-dat­ed tech­nol­o­gy. It is high­ly inef­fi­cient and is respon­si­ble for the release of huge quan­ti­ties of green­house gas­es into the atmos­phere. If the UK gov­ern­ment were seri­ous about address­ing the caus­es of cli­mate change there would be no need for the devel­op­ment of sites such as Hunt­ing­ton Lane. It’s a tragedy that this beau­ti­ful space in an Area of Out­stand­ing Nat­ur­al Beau­ty will be lost in the pur­suit of dirty coal.”

Cam­paign­ers say that were the UK to hit its exist­ing renew­able ener­gy and ener­gy effi­cien­cy tar­gets, the country’s pow­er needs could be met whilst reduc­ing both green­house gas emis­sions and fuel bills. It could also deliv­er thou­sands of jobs for areas like Telford.

“The truth is that the green ener­gy sec­tor offers a huge oppor­tu­ni­ty for job cre­ation where­as jobs in the fos­sil fuel indus­try sim­ply aren’t sus­tain­able in a cli­mate-chang­ing world. Seri­ous invest­ment in the renew­ables sec­tor would inject the econ­o­my with what the indus­try is call­ing a new wave of ‘green col­lar jobs’. In fact the government’s renew­able ener­gy strat­e­gy con­sul­ta­tion iden­ti­fies the poten­tial for upwards of 160,000 new jobs if it meets the UK’s 2020 renew­able ener­gy tar­gets.”

Telford Against New Coal
wmclimatecamp@riseup.net
http://wmclimateaction.wordpress.com/

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We’ve set up this blog in order to keep you informed of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion at UK Coals Hunt­ing­ton Lane SMS (Sur­face Mine Site) in Telford and to appeal for sup­port. Thanks for tak­ing the time to vis­it, we hope you’ll be inspired to join us.

The 230 acre site near the foot of The Wrekin encom­pass­es both open ground and wood­land, eats into the Shrop­shire Hills Area of Out­stand­ing Nat­ur­al Beau­ty and is also home to the pro­tect­ed sched­uled New Works Ancient Mon­u­ment.

At least one Coun­ty Wildlife Site at Limekiln Wood and the flo­ra and fau­na of the Borough’s largest and most valu­able areas of ancient wood­land are threat­ened by the sur­face mine. The devel­op­ment also involves the dis­tur­bance of four bad­ger setts and the for­ag­ing ter­ri­to­ries of a fur­ther two bad­ger clans.

Not only does the pro­posed mine rep­re­sent a major blot on the beau­ti­ful rur­al land­scape, being clear­ly vis­i­ble from the Wrekin and many oth­er local areas, and also cre­ate three years of noise and dust for local res­i­dents – it will also be respon­si­ble for a min­i­mum of 2,430,000 tonnes of cli­mate chang­ing CO2 emis­sions into the atmos­phere.

If you’d like to help in any way please check out some of our oth­er pages and con­tact us at defendhuntingtonlane(at)hushmail.com for more infor­ma­tion.

Defend Hunt­ing­ton Lane. Telford against new coal.
http://defendhuntingtonlane.wordpress.com/