Mining could carry on at Cutacre for nine months
9:09am Tuesday 10th August 2010 in News
OPEN cast mining at the controversial Cutacre site near Over Hulton could continue for an extra nine months.
UK Coal has applied to Bolton Council for planning permission to extend its operations in three areas of the 322-hectare site, which spans three local authorities — Bolton, Salford and Wigan.
All mining at Cutacre was due to be completed by the end of last month but the company has said a number of factors mean there is still around 300,000 tonnes of coal still to be extracted Adverse weather conditions, a lack of workable coal in other areas of the site and the difficult positioning of the coal in the areas UK Coal wants to now tackle have been given as reasons why the programme has over run.
Last night, a spokesman for UK Coal said: “The bad weather has been a major factory and at some points we have had to stand down the site for a week or more.
“Health and safety have to be the main concern and when you are using big equipment in those conditions you just have to stop work.
“It has been quite a difficult site to mine but when we complete this work it will be left in an overall better condition that it was before.”
One campaigner who has fought for the site to be made into a country park when work is completed said: “I don’t mind them extracting the coal, it is what they do to the land afterwards that I am more concerned with.”
The site has been a talking point for more than two decades, ever since the then- National Coal Board applied for permission to start mining operations. A number of applications were rejected until residents failed in their attempts to stop open cast mining at Cutacre in 2001, but believed, due to planning conditions imposed, that it would be restored to a country park after mining operations finished.
Instead, Cutacre has been identified by Bolton Council as a potential development site, and could eventually be turned into a 209-acre industrial estate.
Bolton Council’s planning chiefs are expected to make a decision over whether or not to grant UK Coal the extra time within the next six weeks.
