Activists are occupying and intend to defend a squatted lakeside property in order to prevent the infilling of Radley Lakes with toxic ash from the burning of coal at the nearby npower owned Didcot power station.
The occupants intended to use the property as environmental field centre with the support of the local community, where there is massive local opposition to the destruction of the last two remaining lakes at Radley.
The lakes are unusual in their clarity and the area contains local and national rare and threatened species, with 115 species of birds recorded and over 1000 trees surrounding the lake which will be felled. However this has been ignored by power company RWE npower, and has been rail-roaded through by Oxfordshire County Council. write EF!ers.
If you can get to Oxfordshire and you have a day or three spare please support the activists trying to save Radley Lakes, currently occupying a house, next to them, to prevent them being filled in with ash 'contact the site on 07772055384, location OX14 3NG, a 15 minute walk from Radley Station'
Read more here from Earth First! Action Update.
For my thoughts in an official Green Party capacity read.
2 comments:
And this is what nPower say....
Thank you, for your recent email regarding operations at Didcot Power Station in Oxfordshire. I understand that you are a Juice customer, I hope that by explaining the background to Radley Lakes ash disposal you will be able to appreciate the decision that has been made.
Didcot A is a coal fired power station and a by-product of burning coal to generate electricity is ash. Didcot currently recycles around 45% of the ash it produces, we wish we could do more but the simple truth is there is not the market out there to take it. As a result, continued ash disposal at Radley Lakes, will need to remain an option to enable the station to stay operational into the future.
Ash filling at Radley has been carried out safely, efficiently and with absolutely minimal disruption for over 20 years. The lakes that were filled initially are now restored to be valuable and ecologically diverse additions to the local countryside and have been awarded 'County Wildlife Status', supporting a wide range of flora and fauna including an array of rare orchids. We believe that the alternatives to disposing ash at Radley, either halting power production at Didcot A or putting many extra lorries onto local roads to transport ash to other regions, are not suitable options.
We have taken on board the views of local residents and environmental organisations, and as a result, we are not filling Lake F, the most mature lake with the greatest environmental significance. We do recognise the many different habitats at the Radley site and have guaranteed that once Lake E has been filled, it will be restored in the most ecologically sensitive way possible, and its maintenance as a nature reserve will be guaranteed by way of a trust.
Judge for yourself!
NPower Propaganda - We need a 24/7 facility to dispose of our ash. What have they been doing for the last two years when they went to Oxfordshire County Council with a cock and bull story that their Power Station would close unless they got their planning permission. Despite 11,500 petitioners and over 3000 Objectors, Oxfordshire gave in to NPower, frightened that they would have to pay heavily in legal fees if they did not. So NPower are planning to destroy an area of immense beauty and try to say that they can restore it to a beautiful meadow with orchids - bulls**t and B*ll*cks. They have a gravel pit, recently dug, right on their doorstep, owned by Waste Recycling Group. No lorries needed to dump the ash in there, and it is not a 50 year old mature lake either. But, because they don't own that gravel pit they won't enter into joint-venture with Waste Recycling Group, although WRG take ash from Didcot to layer the municipal waste which is put in other pits on their site.
NPower have not taken on board the view of the local population. If they had they would have backed off. What they will do when the Generating Plant is forced to close in 2016 because they are not going to sign up to the new EU Rules, is close the Power Station, sell it off and leave us with a toxic legacy in Radley that no one will be able to do anything with. The containment of ash slurry inside clay bunds means the ground will never consolidate and people will never walk on it safely. But NPower don't care, they wll be back in Germany having taken their profits from Didcot and run.
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