"Please may I share with you our experience in Balcombe, this"
"summer. We have fought to be heard by the government, West"
"Sussex County Council, the Environment Agency, DECC and the Health and Safety Executive. We went to every planning meeting, we objected to planning, thousands have signed our petitions; we’ve lobbied the Environment Agency (9000 signatures on the Mining Waste Permit and 890 enquiries- the permit was passed within 72 hours of receiving the bulk of those questions and they were never answered.) the HSE, our MPs and our councillors. Our Parish Council held a ballot which said 82% of the village did not want fracking, a further door to door survey in the village, showed that 85% did and does NOT want Cuadrilla here; the industrialisation of our AONB and the unacceptable risks to the purity of our water, our air and soil. We, and many committed people have done everything humanly possible within the bounds of law to stop this industry despoiling our rural community and we have got nowhere and we have not been heard.
We are proud to call ourselves Balcombe residents AND
protestors and protectors of our land. The government and press have done everything they can to dehumanize and vilify mostly, very committed, well informed peaceful protesters and exclude any mention of anti fracking residents – only reporting 60 “pro” signatures about 30 households (there are over 700 households in the village).
The majority of the village supported the protest camp, and we
marched in our hundreds down there, donated food and hot showers. What else could we do? There has been nothing democratic about this whole process, there is no Social Licence for Cuadrilla to be in this village. In addition, I'm sure you know the government are trying to legislate to bypass all local planning.
And we need to protest because the government and West
Sussex County Council has done nothing to help us, and everything to facilitate Cuadrilla, as has an unnecessarily massive,
intimidating riot police force. Where is our apology from the government, from the council, for allowing this to disrupt our
village life for months in the first place, for allowing up to an extra 120 polluting trucks and tankers on our village road weekly? Where is our apology for allowing trucks in to the site past agreed"
deadlines? Where is our apology for providing incorrect information that an extension would be a full planning application and then it turns out to be a “minor amendment”? Where will the council officers be when the polluting flare is lit, hundreds of metres from the nearest residents-not independently monitoring it, or apologizing for changing the planning, to a "minor amendment” from the allowed one metre high, low level flaring screened trough, to a 45ft chimney stack? Where are the enforcement officers? We needed the council to enforce the constant breaches of planning by Cuadrilla, which were not enforced.
In what sort of organisation or structure of decision makers allows
an oil company to potentially risk our water supply, the road safety of primary school children but only takes action against allowing peaceful, lawful protest on the grounds of “safety” when all police presence left the day Cuadrilla did? In what sort of organisation does it take 5 weeks to release a report on excessive drilling noise, causing weeks of sleepless nights, and in the meantime forcing Balcombe residents to do their own monitoring to prove the breaches? The EA were present at a meeting on Saturday 7th September, when finally Cuadrilla’s independent accoustic’s expert asked for the drill to be shut down immediately, because it was at 51 decebels not 42. It was a massive difference, given that decibels are logarhythmic not linear. They spent the next 48 hours baffling the drill.
Cuadrilla’s press office the following day told The Telegraph"
dismissed it as “a bit over”, and was probably the noise from the protesters, the police and possibly the trains! And when we, residents called them they denied any such meeting had ever taken place, they lie. We can guarantee that the council haven’t penalized the company either for sound breaches, they sat on their hands and did nothing.
What sort of organisation allowed drilling to go ahead knowing
there was not enough time to complete the operations at the site, or without the correct planning for horizontal drilling? The council needs to provide answers and as yet our questions, letters, emails, phone calls are not being answered. They are our elected representatives they work for us, we pay them, not the gas and oil industry.
So you see, we really don’t "have a say" at all, there is no
democracy, quite the opposite. The Balcombe Parish Council in
the national press and TV, apologized profusely as the"
application never saw the light of day. Our MP, Francis Maud is not informed properly when we meet him, which is very rare, and
obviously has his sticky fingers clasped firmly to senior government
adviser Lord Brown, whom he appointed in 2010, who owns most of Cuadrilla, is a senior adviser to the government and was the president of the Royal Society of Engineers whose report is often quoted on the benefits of fracking.
With regard to ""stringent regulations"", “ the best regulation in the
"world”- once you investigate it, there appear to be very few. It’s all self regulation. Cuadrilla sent a weekly""catch up" fax to the authorities, the Health and Safety Executive didn’t even visit a major industrial site in 4 months! We residents in Balcombe, the FOE lawyers and our green MEP forced Cuadrilla to delay drilling for four weeks to get Mining Waste and Radioactive Permits, even though they had applied for the licence 3 years before- it wasn’t the EA that initiated them. The Radioactive Permit was only issued 2 days after Cuadrilla left the site. More concerning, we have had a gill stream go fluorescent green down its entire length, 75 yards
rom the well pad, a few weeks ago. It was reported early afternoon by numerous residents, and the EA only arrived at night to take samples, went to the wrong stream, so came back the following day at lunchtime...they think it’s probably a hoax…but “its all a bit of a mystery” for them. If this is an example of their
"emergency pollution incident plan"" God help us all if there's a toxic spill! They have been extremely vague about what that
green colour is exactly, or its source – it’s just not good enough.
They just did a “Meet the EA” evening in our village church and
admitted that they had visited the well pad, during the four month operation, a “handful” of times relying on Cuadrilla to
"mark their own “homework”. They admitted to me personally they were finding it “all a bit of a struggle” with Fernhurst and
"Wisborough Green about to kick off, they are desperately under resourced and are about to have 15% of their staff axed.
We have had brown water coming out of taps, dead bats in our
gardens, dead fish, our red kites left their nests and there was no dawn chorus when drilling took place. No consideration for the"
protected species, if it’s an exploratory drill you don’t need a"
proper environmental impact assessment. If it’s an AONB, it means nothing – and this is just the exploratory drill phase.
We, the residents, in the face of terrible manipulative opposition
are trying to inform people of our experiences, an estimated 58 million has been wiped off our house prices and we cannot get"
insurance for any mining related damage, we have to be
covered by the government. We have travelled and supported other communities. It s an exhausting process, a marathon against powerful government and press, we are not eco warriors just ordinary people desperate to protect our community, our already stressed countryside, and water, our air and soil from irreversible harm, and give whatever help we can to other communities. More frightening is that clever France and Germany have banned fracking, but their mining industries are now looking at the UK as a soft touch.
This is our side of the story, we are the people on the ground. With
statements opposing hydraulic fracturing from the government in
Scotland, on environmental grounds (not to mention Climate Change), the RSPB, The Woodland Trust, Sussex Wildlife Trust, the Angling Trust, The National Trust (please check on their website), and many northern groups, we cannot all be making this up! We the little people need all the help we can get in the face of this government policy, their own personal vested interests, and this young, greedy, unregulated industry.