The planning process is now complete in Kirby Misperton and
its various disparate advocates have withdrawn to make their plans; Third
Energy to plan their fracking tests, other companies to prepare their next
proposals, and the opposing groups to demonstrate and disrupt. Green leafy
Yorkshire, they say, is to be industrialised. Yet that was not the professional
balanced judgement made by North Yorkshire’s planning officers.
While it is
true that modern fracking techniques use technology that is much more environmentally-friendly
than ten years ago, and could access over 200 km2 of land from a
single location, using smaller pumps and more environmentally friendly fluids,
anxieties remain.
Surely, however small the impact
of a fracking location would be on countryside, it behoves us to ensure they
are, wherever it is possible, located in already industrialised brown-field
sites. These are scattered around the countryside in surprising numbers, spread
wide enough to enable all of the target rocks to be accessed.
It would be better to have a well-pad
in an existing light industrial estate where lorry traffic is already planned
for than in a virgin leafy dell.
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