Fracking is cancelled

by adamboyden on 16 September, 2016

I was relieved to find out (via Frome’s Anti-fracking group) this week that South Western Energy have decided not to take up the Government’s offer of licences for unconventional gas exploration, including ‘fracking’ for shale gas, in the countryside near Frome in four 10km square blocks including Beckington, Rode and nearby Wiltshire towns.

This good news comes three years after I and other Lib Dem district councillors successfully negotiated a strongly worded cross-party motion at Mendip District Council in 2013, when councillors unanimously agreed MDC should seek to control and prevent fracking in the district, and demanded full investigations into the effects on our environment including groundwater, landscape, wildlife, and Bath’s Hot Springs and health before any fracking was allowed.  Mendip then set up a cross-party Fracking Working Group to keep an eye on things and lobby the Government. The Government then removed the licences from most of the district, presumably atleast partly due to our concerns.  Earlier this year I, cllr Damon Hooton and other members of the FWG questioned South Western Energy about their plans, and learned they were focusing on data gathering in Wiltshire for up to 2 years.

It is very good news that these plans have now been withdrawn. The subsequent planning process for any applications, had they been submitted to the county councils for approval, would have been very divisive, as it has been in Lancashire, Sussex and Yorkshire, with the Government now promising a shale wealth fund (bribe?) for local communities, and anti-fracking campaigners rightly pointing out the risks to our health and the local and global environment from any industrial scale high-volume high-pressure fracking activity nearby. Those risks have now gone away, for now.

So, ‘we may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing’.

Please see here for previous news and background on fracking in Mendip.

   1 Comment

One Response

  1. Jenny Hawkes says:

    Fracking is cancelled!

    That’s wonderful news, Adam. Many thanks for your intervention which helped make this possible. Good news for all of us close to Beckington and thereabouts.

    Jenny Hawkes

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