Tipped over the edge
Reporter: Report by MARINA BERRY; Pictures: DARREN ROBINSON
Date published: 23 January 2009
Tempers fray over waste plan
ANXIOUS residents who believe their lives will be blighted by plans to tip waste near their homes turned out in force last night in an 11th-hour bid to block the move.
Feelings ran high at Hey Hall, Springhead, as 150 householders voiced their concerns at plans to tip waste at Birks Quarry on the Lees/Austerlands border.
Angry members of the crowd quizzed the Environment Agency and the borough’s planners in the final days before Royton-based Opengoal Limited learns if it will get a permit to tip.
The panel was bombarded with questions about everything from noise, dust and bad smells to road safety, mud on the road, the effect on wildlife, and excess surface water.
Residents repeatedly drew comparisons with Scouthead’s controversial High Moor Quarry, calling the Environment Agency “toothless” in its attempts to deal with problems there.
The ability of the Environment Agency to adequately monitor waste tipped at the site, was also called into question.
The Environment Agency’s Bill Darbyshire said, although he sympathised with all the points residents were making, the agency had no reason to consider any applicant as anything other than fit and proper to run a tip unless it had been previously prosecuted under waste laws — which did not apply to Opengoal.
Planning permission for Birks Quarry to be used as a tip was given 20 years ago by the Planning Inspectorate on appeal following repeated refusal by Oldham Council to give it the go-ahead.
Today is the deadline for the public to make objections to the Environment Agency which then has until February 9 to decide if it will grant a permit to tip.
Dozens flocked to hand in written comments at the end of the meeting.
One resident said: “I don’t want to be picking up a newspaper in 18 months’ time and reading that someone’s child has been killed.”
But the meeting heard that £250,000 of Oldham Council taxpayers’ money had already been spent fighting the application two decades ago, and there were unlikely to be any new issues which would sway the decision.
John Battye, who was the leader of Oldham council at the time it fought against the plans, urged residents to band together if a tipping permit is granted to act as eyes and ears for the Environment Agency to make sure the operators kept to the conditions.
He told them: “There is a lot of pent up anger in this room tonight, but we need a core of people who will take on board, with local councillors, a way forward if this licence is granted.”
Mr Battye appealed for residents to use cameras to record any breaches, and keep diaries with times and dates which could be used as evidence in court.
He added: “If this tip opens, we want it shutting, and we can only do that if we provide the evidence, and you can do that with ‘cam-war’.”
The council is still adamant that access to the site from the A62 is unsafe, but has no power to overturn the Planning Inspectorate’s decision, which sided with the applicant who pointed out there was little point granting permission for a tip then refusing to give it access.
Councillor Battye told the meeting he was speaking on behalf of Oldham East and Saddleworth MP Phil Woolas, who was unable to be there, but had pledged to call in the Government’s North-West office to work with the Environment Agency before the February 9 deadline on looking at the legality of the processes which had led to the current position.
No-one was there to answer questions from Opengoal Limited or the Planning Inspectorate — despite invitations being sent to both parties.
