opencast at Park Wall
I have only recently seen the UK Coal leaflet about the proposals. Although not against opencasting in principle this particular one must surely be rejected - at least for the present.
Apart from the cheek of the company calling the existing landscape 'bland' and suggesting in a somewhat godlike that they would improve it there is the whole question of how all the output is to be shifted. Contrary to UK Coal's assertion the A68 is not a trunk road, indeed it is of a pretty low standard even for the county maintained A road it is. The site used to be traversed by a railway - as described in recent articles in the WVM - and had it not been prematurely dismantled then the ability to use it to remove the coal and clay would have hugely reduced the impact of the scheme.
It is claimed that the coal is needed for the economy as fossil energy sources become scarcer - but surely the longer it is left in the ground the more valuable it will become, so that at some point in the future it would be so valuable that the proceeds from its extraction could pay for the restoration of a rail link to Crook, and so provide a lasting community benefit to the area. And why, if coal is needed so much did UK Coal - yes the same UK Coal - refuse to let the miners at Ellington, the last deep mine in the Northeast, continue to pump their pit and prevent the loss of acess to millions of tons of coal reserves under the North Sea?
Graham Stevenson, Stanley Crook