open cast plans for the north of england — meet in Newcastle to make plans, and for the Camp for Climate Action

The 2008 camp for cli­mate action is to be held near to the pro­posed site for a new coal fired pow­er sta­tion. E‑on the com­pa­ny that wants to build the pow­er sta­tion has stat­ed that it will use a sys­tem called Car­bon Cap­ture and stor­age. C.C.S is still in an ear­ly devel­op­ment stage and has not been used on such a large scale. The pow­er sta­tion will have to begin life with­out any c.c.s mean­ing mega-tons of unfil­tered Co2 emis­sions’ head­ing into our atmos­phere .

The cli­mate camp(www.climatecamp.org.uk) at Kingsnorth in the Med­way val­ley will high­light and take direct action against the black hole in the gov­ern­ments cli­mate change pol­i­cy. COAL.

Pow­er sta­tions like Egg­brough, Drax and Kingsnorth pro­duce huge amounts of filthy emis­sions, drax alone pro­duces approx 21 mil­lions tones of Co2 per year.
All this coal has to come from some­where and it would ‘seam’ the mon­ey men have set their greedy eyes on the north of Eng­land again.
U:k coal and the banks group have sev­er­al plan­ning appli­ca­tion to sur­face mine/open cast across the North East.
*Bradley Co. Durham- 550 000 tonnes
*Park wall north Co. Durham- 1 275 000 tonnes
*pot­land burn Northum­ber­land- 2 000 000 tonnes
*Shot­ton Northum­ber­land- 3 000 000 tonnes
*An exten­sion to the exsist­ing site at wid­dring­ton

In addi­tion to these appli­ca­tions there is already one of the largest open cast sites in the U:K at Sto­b­swood near Mor­peth. Sur­face min­ing sites are also oper­at­ing in Wid­dring­ton, Blag­don estate in Northum­ber­land. Stead­burns and stoney heap near to Con­sett Co. Durham.

In the case of shotton/cramlington plan­ning appli­ca­tion, Shot­ton is in an open­cast con­straint area which means that there is a pre­sump­tion against Sur­face min­ing. Northum­ber­land coun­ty coun­cil up held the con­straint and re-ject­ed the appli­ca­tion. How­ev­er the com­mu­ni­ties and local gov­ern­ment sec­re­tary Hazel Blears M.P Stepped in and over­ruled the coun­ty coun­cil allow­ing the open­cast oper­a­tion to go ahead much to dis­may of the local com­mu­ni­ty
(www.journallive.co.uk/north-east-news/todays-news/2008/02/08/ministers-quizzed-on-opencast-policy-61634–20450633/ )
The pot­land burn site is also in a con­straint area yet U:K coal has still lodged an appli­ca­tion prob­a­bly because they feel the polit­i­cal cli­mate is in their favor.

As if the eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion, indus­tri­al injuries/deaths and dis­rup­tion to the com­mu­ni­ty that open­cast min­ing leaves behind Npow­er have stat­ed that they have an immi­nent plan­ning appli­ca­tion to build a new coal fired pow­er sta­tion in Blyth on the site of the exist­ing pow­er sta­tion. Con­struc­tion is due to begin 2014 on the same time­line as Kingsnorth.
Whilst the focus is on the cli­mate camp and Kingsnorth, the North of Eng­land and our resources are cen­tral to the U:K gov­ern­ment and their cap­i­tal­ist boss­es plans for a new gen­er­a­tion of dirty pow­er sta­tions .
This new gen­er­a­tion of coal fired pow­er sta­tions and the unac­cept­able min­ing prac­tices that accom­pa­ny them must be stopped.
One of the key fea­tures of the cli­mate camp is direct action.
The Banks group have offices in West Corn­forth near Fer­ry­hill, U:K coal head offices are in Don­cast­er’ leave it in the ground’ have began reg­u­lar noise demos out­side the next is 14th July. All the open­cast sites are eas­i­ly acces­si­ble.

Peo­ple are meet­ing to dis­cuss and plan for the upcom­ing cli­mate camp at the star and shad­ow cin­e­ma, New­cas­tle upon tyne. Next meet­ing is Thurs­day July 3rd at 6pm why not come along and join the move against cli­mate change.

Links and info:

www.climatecamp.org.uk
www.earthfirst.org.uk/leaveitintheground
www.greenpeace.com
www.thecoalhole.org
www.indymedia.org.uk
www.pontvalley.net
www.banksdevlopments.com
www.ukcoal.com