Locals like me do not want a mine
WEST Cumbria is far from ‘living contentedly’ with Sellafield’s decades of discharges of radioactive wastes, including into the Irish Sea, under which a coal mine is planned (Mail). In 2017, long before any Extinction Rebellion protests, it was local nuclear safety campaigners, many living in Whitehaven, who blew the whistle on the coal mine. We were told to ‘get a conscience’ by the coal mine boss. The reason not ‘a bat squeak of protest’ can be seen at the site is because every trace of opposition is removed immediately. No dissent is allowed! Are people ‘content’ that the mine boss has been hired by the Government to offer advice on plans for a massive nuclear waste dump under the Irish Sea? Are we happy that the socially important £2.4 million Heritage Lottery-funded Haig Colliery Mining Museum has been bought by the coal mine? The mine will impact supplies of domestic water drawn from boreholes near Sellafield and will deliver a geological disposal facility for hot nuclear waste under the Irish Sea. The ‘heroic’ coal mine is just a story to hide a nuclear nightmare. MARIANNE BIRKBY, Milnthorpe, Cumbria.
THE coal mine being proposed in West Cumbria is essential to the local economy, with more than 2,000 direct and supply-chain jobs being created. It’s essential to a British steel industry that needs cost-effective access to high-quality metallurgical coal. If this mine doesn’t open, millions of tons of coal for our steel industry will be mined abroad and transported thousands of miles by sea. It can be argued that the new British mine will reduce pollution. The problem is that most of the woke protesters objecting to the new mine have no understanding of industry.