The Abersychan ward councillors are delighted that the minister Carl Sargent has agreed with the council and refused the planning application at Varteg for the reclamation and coal recovery.
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Yesterday Midlothian Council voted 9 to 5 in favour of Hargreaves Services’ (foremerly Scottish Coal’s) application to mine 10 million tonnes of coal from Cauldhall, a site the size of 1000 football pitches that will mean the destruction of a family home and a lorry entering or leaving the site every 3 minutes. Angry shouts from local residents and campaigners filled the chamber in Dalkeith after the final vote was cast, and earlier in the day a protest had taken place outside the council building. Action group Stop Cauldhall Opencast has expressed its dismay at the result and have described it as a “travesty of the planning process”. Campaigners have also vowed to continue the fight.

Read the Stop Cauldhall Opencast press release here: http://stopopencast.org.uk/?p=454

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The NO OPENCAST Group are asking for concerned people to contact Torfaen Council (TCBC) to urge them not to agree to the new proposed Section 106 agreement that Glamorgan Power has proposed, thus enabling the mine to be given permission.

The council rejected Glamorgan Power’s application to remove 68 hectares in Varteg to extract 325,000 tonnes of coal in 2011. The grounds for the rejection were that the local population lived to close to the site (within 50m) and Ysgol Bryn Onnen (a local nursery to Primary age Welsh School with 200+ pupils) is within 120m of the boundary and under MTAN 2 (preventing opencasting within 500m of homes and schools) this was not acceptable on grounds of noise, dust and light pollution. The company has since appealed and a Public Inquiry began in January 2012 that lasted 7 weeks.
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The BBC report today that the site at Huntington Lane in the Wrecking finished mining in June and UK Coal are replacing the top soil. Depending on weather conditions the heavy machinery could leave within weeks. We are pleased to hear that local people’s experience of an operational mine are soon to be over.
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Doncaster council is proposing digging up the an area of community parkland on the site of the the Bullcroft Colliery tip, in Carcroft/Skellow. It wants to put out to tender for a coal operation. If this pilot is a success they want to do the same at other redundant coal workings.

The council acknowledges that this operation would have “adverse consequences for the local community, such as dust, noise and traffic.” If they were to speak to members of communities living in the vicinity of other coal mining operations they would find that these issues cannot easily be solved and that loosing a public open space would have a great affect on local people. Their report also says that “the coal deposits within the tip may combust [on the site].”
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