Lots of action for TTer’s to be aware of on the small p front.
Hexham Town Councils Sustainability Policy was discussed at the Hexham Town Councils Planning and Infrastructure committee. The decision was made to send the Document back to the Town Plan Built Environment and Transport Group to be revised. The Sustainability policy hopefully will be discussed at the next Planning and Infrastructure committee and be presented to the full Council in Early March or April.
At the next Hexham Town Council meeting on Monday 2nd February at 6.45pm Sustrans/Northumberland County Council will make a presentation about a cycle and footpath routes audit. Please come along to listen.
All below has not reached mainstream TV news and National Radio. But has been on the world service overnight. Why??
Lancashire County Council has deferred decision on 2 Fracking sites at the request of Cuadrilla. See here
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jan/28/lancashire-council-defers-cuadrilla-fracking-decision
The Prime Minister is determined to get fracking, He has a £5m fund to “advise the public on the benefits of fracking”. He is also trying to get Ministers to intervene in Local Government affairs.
Click Here
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jan/26/george-osborne-ministers-fast-track-fracking
And the icing on the cake.
In 2010 David Cameron pledged that he would lead the ‘greenest government ever‘.
Now the Infastructure Bill amendment on a moratorium against Fracking has been defeated by 52, to 308, and of course Guy Opperman voted against the moratorium. Most Labour MPs did not vote. The issue of trespass under you home was not discussed as the debate ran out of time.
If reserves are proved this will involve drilling hundreds of wells. Well depletion means that 45% more wells have to be drilled every year to maintain production. This is compound expansion of drilling sites.
For example
Year 1, 20 sites
Year 2 29 sites
Year 3 42 sites
Year 3 60 sites
Each site is the size of a football pitch, add the attending pipelines. Each site requires vast amounts of water, toxic chemicals.
Here is a fun! Site. http://www.dangersoffracking.com/
At Bassetlaw in Nottinghamshire one Coal bed Methane test site has been refused 4 others have permission. But the pressure is on as Bassetlaw and South Yorkshire sit on one of the largest areas of Coal bed Methane gas in the UK (Bowland Shale).
Coal bed Methane is methane (natural gas) trapped in coal seams underground. To extract the gas, after drilling into the seam, it is necessary to pump large amounts of water out of the coal seam to lower the pressure. It is often also necessary to frack the seam to extract the gas. There are a similar catalogue of negative environmental and social effects as with Shale Gas. This includes methane migration, toxic water contamination, air pollution, increased carbon emissions and a general industrialisation of the countryside. Impacts that are specific to CBM include depletion of the water table and potentially subsidence.
In common with other unconventional gas extraction, such as Shale Gas, CBM wells do not produce large amounts of gas per well and production declines very quickly. It is therefore necessary to drill large numbers of wells, covering huge swathes of the landscape. CBM exploitation began in the US and over 55,000 CBM wells have been drilled in the last decade or so, mostly in the western states (Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming in particular). In Australia, where it is known as Coal Seam Gas (CSG), over 5,000 CBM wells have been drilled in Queensland in the last few years and the industry is aggressively expanding into New South Wales. In the UK CBM is more advanced than Shale Gas and full scale production may begin soon.
The experence of CBM in the USA read here
http://www.energyjustice.net/naturalgas/cbm
Northumberland is on the list with licences already granted off our North East coast for Underground Coal Gasification.
Please keep the carbon in the ground!
Transition Tynedale 