Defending our heritage from frackers

From: Sir Richard Storey, Malton.

HAD Sir Bernard Ingham ( The Yorkshire Post, August 19) any first-hand experience of fracking, he couldn’t have written such an ill-informed and, therefore, silly article wrapped in his own pre-Thatcherite politics.

Friends of mine with real experience of fracking now surrounding a wonderful garden that they and their forebears had had created, open to the public, write as follows: “Our home has changed beyond recognition with 14 well sites. Hardly a local road exists without pipelines crossing or running down the verge.

“We closed our garden because the huge increase in heavy and hazardous tankers made travelling here unsafe for our visitors. The noise of the road traffic heard in the garden is unbearable; when working outdoors these days we usually wear ear fenders. We were promised only very small works, but these soon escalated hugely to bear no resemblance to the start. Fracking, re-fracking, and flaring is routine. Our little country roads are now unsafe for walking or animals, being used for petrochemical transport travelling at speed.

“While an oil drilling rig may only need 70 heavy transport loads, it is only a tiny proportion of transport generated by a site. Actual traffic has exceeded the original contract by well over 1,000 per cent. Some companies flair for months on end, day and night, all around the year. We don’t need electric lights at night.”

Simply, my knowing this garden, these people, and their community, and reading what has been written above, I find this just tragic.

If this generation in Yorkshire betrays our heritage by now allowing fracking, it will be despised and hated for generations to come.

From: Steven M White, Great

Edstone, York.

FOR the record (Bernard Ingham, The Yorkshire Post, August 19), far from being a “rag bag of so-called environmentalists”, Frack Free Ryedale is a large grouping of local residents including chartered surveyors, farmers, project managers, local councillors, doctors, teachers, small business owners and so on – the vast majority of whom have never protested about anything before.