Blackpool, Lancashire, UK 9th February, 2016. Protesters against the Cuadrilla appeal to allow shale gas drilling - or fracking is to be decided at this hearing in Blackpool. Energy firm Cuadrilla is appealing the council's refusal to allow fracking on two sites in Plumpton & Roseacre Woods. The procedure which allows the Secretary of State to decide the outcome following the appeal rather than a government planning inspector, will be used. Credit: Cernan Elias/Alamy Live News


Fracking company Cuadrilla Resources’ plans in Lancashire have been held back by enormous community opposition but this decision has now been overturned for the Preston New Road site by central government (a decision on the Roseacre Wood site has been deferred), in an attempt to bypass any community involvement. Cuadrilla have now started work on constructing the site but the local communities are standing their ground. There is a daily rolling blockade outside the site and resistance is spreading to support sites with a demo planned outside the primary construction contractor (AE Yates) yard in Bolton. The plans call for drilling and hydraulically fracturing 4 horizontal wells at the Preston New Road over a 2 year period, requiring around 20,000 truck movements and produce millions of gallons of toxic and radioactive liquid and solid waste. The impact of just this site will be wide-spread, with waste likely to be trucked and dumped in Leeds, Middlesborough or Stoke-on-Trent and frac sand (which causes lung disease silicosis and lung cancer) being trucked from Cheshire or Norfolk.


Size: 2000px × 3000px
Location: Blackpool, LANCASHIRE, UK
Photo credit: © EnVogue_Photo / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
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