The Fight for Berry Hill

An article by Cllr Terry Crowe

As everyone is well aware by now, British Coal have submitted a planning application to extract 1.25 Million tonnes of coal from Berry Hill, by opencast methods, which in my own view would take up to ten years. The working site would be up to four hundred acres, and would destroy the quality of life for years to come for the people of Stoke-on-Trent, and in particular, the residents of Eaton Park, Berry Hill, Bentilee, Bucknall, Joiner’s Square, and large parts of Fenton.

The dirt, dust and noise that is unavoidably generated by this kind of operation cannot help but have a detrimental effect on our health and environmental well-being. British Coal say they will put in screening mounds to protect the people from the visual view of the site and also the dust. As far as the visual views is concerned, people will not be looking down into the workings, but at a big dirty hill, instead of the beautiful scenery they have at the present time. The dust will just rise over these mounds and drop over a wider area, which will be a particular problem to the residents of Bentilee, as one of these proposed so called screening mounds will run the length of Dividy Road.

The noise that would be coming off the site is another major contribution to the destruction of our quality of life. The machinery needed for the operations are noisy enough alone, but on top of that there will be blasting day-in and day-out. British Coal say that the noise from the blastings would be kept to reasonable levels but will not tell us what they consider reasonable levels.

I do not believe it is possible for them to control the explosions to that extent, because they will not know how much explosive they will have to use at any one time. Obviously, the more they use the bigger the explosion will be, and lots more dust will be thrown up to land over the surrounding areas.
Lastly, but not least, I would draw attention to the wildlife that would be destroyed by the workings. At the present time we have hawks, long eared owls, hares, rabbits, foxes, and many other kinds of animal life, as well as many kinds of plant life that, if lost to the area, would be unlikely ever to return.

There are many other reasons why British Coal should never have even considered such operations in an area like Berry Hill, but to list them would take up far more space in this magazine than we have. I would urge you all to oppose this scheme wherever and whenever possible, and tell British Coal to keep out of Stoke-on-Trent. We have a beautiful, clean city here and will not go back to the dirty city of years ago, for the sake of making a profit. I ask anyone wanting to protect our area from this attack to contact the Berry Hill Action Committee, who will be glad of any offers of help.

Editor’s Note: The campaign against opencast mining on Berry Hill was successful, thanks to the hard work and commitment of the Berry Hill Action Committeee and local residents in opposing British Coal’s applications.