Campaigner criticises ‘horrendous’ tip scheme

A founder member of the group which led to the creation of the Medlock Valley Country Park has joined the objections to plans to create a massive tip in Bardsley.

Doreen Morton, secretary of the Bardsley Residents’ Community Centre in Ashton Road for 30 years, said the plans to consider the near-by former colliery site in Coal Pit Lane for a new landfill site were horrendous.

Mrs Morton, who lives just across the Oldham boundary in Limehurst, Ashton, was a founder member of the Medlock Trust, created before the area was designated a country park back in the 1970s.

The former colliery in Coal Pit Lane was identified last month as a site which could take residual waste — the rubbish left when all the recycling has been carried out — for Greater Manchester.

But Mrs Morton said the plans, which could lead to heavy lorries using Ashton Road every day, would be detrimental to the many groups which use the community centre, and the green lung of the park.

She said: “The centre is used by a playgroup every day, a slimming club, band practices, rainbows, brownies and guides, and for parties at weekends. The whole of the area would be affected by heavy lorries.

“The Medlock Valley is a major recreational centre for walking, cycling, horse riding golf, fishing and other naturalist activities such as bee keeping and the wild life and birdlife is phenomenal.”

As well as rubbish and litter, she is concerned about possible gasses leaking from any tip site, and fluids leaching from it into local water courses.

She said: “The link road between Ashton and Oldham is also a link to the motorway and is heavily used.

“Already with road narrowing and bus lanes any minor hold up becomes a major stoppage, so to increase the volume with large tipping vehicles is unbelievable.”