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Tuesday, July 29, 2014

BBC fails to broadcast my interview yet again

UPDATE - I was wrong, apparently.   A colleague heard me on BBC Radio Shropshire at about 5.15 pm yesterday.  That's all I know so far!

POST -

I walked over to the community protection group camp yesterday morning to be met by a BBC interviewer with the unlikely name of James Bond.  He interviewed most of us there using his handy tape recorder and furry microphone, and this was the result - as far as I know.  A reasonable exposure for the camp, it has to be said, but nothing was broadcast as yet about what we said.  The report is simply what's being put out by Dart Energy.  There was one sentence I suppose -

'There is a danger of water contamination.'

That's to put it mildly.  Water is the actual target of the drill, to bust into the aquifer and release methane gas from the coal bed below up and into it, ensuring the water is permanently unuseable.  Water is the intended target of the drill, and not gas.  Tell 'em that, Mr Bond - James Bond.

As for the attempts being made to eliminate the badgers in the wood behind us by men in black visiting at night, and ensure no planning hiccups before the aquifer is destroyed, no mention was made.  http://the-tap.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/dart-energy-illegally-insert-blacked.html

Just behind the hedge in the picture is a stream called the Bryn Daniel.  This runs all the way to the Ceiriog and then to the River Dee.  To the left of the picture is a stream running right through the proposed drilling site into the Bryn Daniel.  The use of 600 chemicals and release of underground radiation from the pumped out water from the old coal seam will make the water used by Chester highly contaminated.  Dart claim they will take away all their muck when they've finished.  Yeah.  Right.  This is a water destruction exercise, the purpose being to make water a scarce resource.  We will need to import and pay dearly for it in the future.  In Texas which has been fracked for ten years, the frackers now sell the water.

We particularly asked not to be called protesters, but protectors.  There you go.  That's the BBC for you.  I'm on the left holding Charlie my eldest.  We want him and his children to have fresh clean water, as we do millions of others across the region.  All are still asleep, it seems, believing the kind of crap churned out by the main media every day, of which the below is a fine example.  A single steel pipe is all that will stand between clean water and permanent destruction of the Shropshire aquifer which sits a few hundred feet underneath our tents, safely protected from the methane below, at the moment.  Dart want to end that separation  by drilling a hole to connect the two together.  The innocuous sounding 'test drill' is all they need to achieve this monumental destruction of our most precious resource.

BBC website.

Campaigners object to Dudleston coal bed methane plans

Protest camp at DudlestonProtesters said they would stay at the site until a decision was made on the planning application

A protest camp has been set up at a proposed gas drilling site in north Shropshire.
Dart Energy has applied for permission to dig a test borehole to check for coal bed methane on farmland in Dudleston, near Ellesmere.
The planning application is due to be decided by Shropshire Council by 15 September.
About a dozen people have set up a camp and said they would stay at least until the council made its decision.
The protesters, from Say No To Fracking, said coal bed methane drilling was "too much of an environmental risk" and called on the government to look at why people across the country were campaigning against various forms of gas extraction.
They said there was a danger of water contamination.
Coal bed methane involves drilling down to a coal seam and then removing water to stimulate the flow of methane, which can then be used to produce energy.
Dart Energy was granted planning permission to create a test borehole at the site in 2010, but it expired last year.
The latest plans include drilling a 830m-deep (2,720ft) borehole at the site. If approved by the council, it would remain for a maximum of two months, after which it would be sealed.
Dart Energy has previously said a steel pipe would be inserted into the borehole to stop water being affected.
Regardless of the council's decision on the test borehole, full-scale extraction would require separate planning permission.



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