Minorca Opencast Protest Group: Press Release 65


MINORCA SURFACE MINE APPLICATION TO FEATURE ON BBC1 AS COUNTRYFILE INVESTIGATES THE ISSUE OF OPENCAST MINING.

Up to five million viewers, who watch the BBC Countryfile programme, will be introduced to some of the current issues surrounding applying for new opencast mine sites when they tune into the programme to be broadcast on Sunday August 15th . A crew were filming for a “John Craven Investigates” slot today and they had chosen to use UK Coal’s Minorca Surface Mine application as a case study.
Steve Leary, from the Minorca Opencast Protest Group who have been actively campaigning against the proposal said

“When the researcher from the programme first contacted me early in July to say that they were interested in doing a story for the programme I could not believe that this was happening. We had also learnt that UK Coal had just submitted another 600 page document in support of their application. It then seemed that we would have to give the opportunity for some national publicity for our cause a miss as, at the time, we were expecting to have to get our new set of objections ready for a meeting of Leicestershire County Council’s (LCC) Regulatory Control and Development Board meeting on August 15th, already a really tight timetable.
Luckily for us, almost immediately, LCC then postponed the earliest possible date for deciding this application to September 16th, which gave us more time to prepare our new set of objections, get fresh letters of objection sent by our members and supporters to the various councils concerned, Parish, District and County. In addition we now know that we will have time to prepare to lobby and speak at the various meetings where this issue is to be on the agenda yet again.

So I then indicated to Countryfile that we would be delighted to help them with the programme in any way possible. The result was that they came to the area for three hours this morning”.

During the morning John Craven and the crew visited various locations around the Minorca site and also took pictures of UK Coal’s Lounge site outside Ashby de la Zouch, which still waits to restored, six years after last being used. This, another site for which UK Coal gained only temporary permission to use as a mineral site, has recently been in the news because UK Coal did not seem to be cooperating with LCC in complying the Company’s obligation to restore the site as requested earlier this year.

Steve Leary was also interviewed for the programme, and later a meeting of MOPG members, involving Andrew Bridgen MP, Joanna Crane, Sue Morrell, Terry Morrell, Brian Moseley and Steve Leary were filmed discussing issues to do with this application, especially how it will impact on The River Mease Special Area of Conservation. MOPG are just about to issue their latest Briefing Note on issues to do with this application entitled “The Minorca Application and the River Mease SAC” and this meeting was an opportunity to finalise a copy of the note. This was opportune, as this was one of the main issues that John Craven wanted to investigate.

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FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THIS PRESS RELEASE CONTACT:
STEVE LEARY, SPOKESPERSON, MOPG
tel 05601 767981, email  steve46leary@googlemail.com
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON MOPG PLEASE GO TO:
 http://www.mopg.co.uk or
 http://www.leicestershirevillages.com/measham/minorca-protest.html