YP Letters: Make firms clean up after fracking mess

I’M a Castleford lad and came from a strong coal mining community. It was said that if I stood on our house roof and rotated a full 360 degrees, I would see 10 pitheads.

Growing up, I was aware that the extraction of coal could also produce subsidence and we were fortunate that in our family house a little repointing sorted the problem. New seams were mined to produce the minimum disruption to the property and facilities above ground.

Now, with the closure of the mines, pitheads are being removed along with slag heaps etc and we are seeing somewhat of return to the green and pleasant land.

May I suggest to the fracking communities that the process will be continually refined and their contract could contain the clause that when extraction is complete the area be returned to its original state? This is called progress and no people nor area are entitled to immunity from any advancement that is beneficial or imperative to the wellbeing of the broader area, and the country as a whole.

From: Steven M White, Great Edstone, York.

AS a resident of Western Australia and a worker in the fracking industry, Dr Graham Marshall (The Yorkshire Post, February 3) can perhaps be forgiven for being muddled about the groundswell of concern about fracking amongst ordinary residents in Ryedale.

The truth is, as local councillor Di Keal put it (The Yorkshire Post, February 6), we are a “broad church of campaigners from all walks of life, many of whom have never waved a placard before in [our] lives” – not “green anarchists” or credulous simpletons; just ordinary professional people capable of doing their own research, applying rational review, and coming to their own conclusions.

He may like to know that anti-fracking businesses in the area have also been targeted for abuse on Facebook and Twitter by pro-frackers: perhaps the one thing we can agree on is the community strife and upset caused when the fracking bandwagon lumbers into town.

From: Roger Whitaker, Hardwick Road, Pontefract.

ON a recent cold, wet, miserable day with little or no wind, the wind turbines in the area where I live were at a standstill and smoke and steam were coming out of Eggborough power station, so I assumed they were generating power for the National Grid.

On the same day it was announced that the power station would close in September of this year. So for similar days after Eggborough has closed, where will the power come from?

From: John Ramskill, Lumby.

CAN I express my pleasure in reading Tom Richmond’s piece regarding fracking (The Yorkshire Post, February 3)?

In far fewer words, his views mirror those of mine, and Kevin Hollinrake MP on interim power generating resources (The Yorkshire Post, February 10).

I dearly wish the Government would cease procrastinating and grant the final go-ahead for this development. It most certainly will bring matters to a head, but let’s get it over and done with to allow the technique to prove its credentials.

From: Paul Muller, Woodthorpe Gardens, Sandal, Wakefield.

IF you have an electric car, you have to plug it into an electricity supply. The electricity has to come from the power stations which will have to be massively increased in number to supply all the electricity needed for the millions of vehicles.

The power stations in this country use mainly coal and gas, and so they will pollute our atmosphere even more than our cars and buses do at the moment.The only solution to this problem in Yorkshire is to frack for gas or to build many small nuclear power stations throughout the country, as they do in France.

From: Trevor Black, Gowthorpe, York.

I FOUND the article on fracking (The Yorkshire Post, February 3) by Kevin Hollinrake MP to be very disingenuous.

Any comparison with the wide open spaces of the USA is meaningless. In order to pursue his drive towards so called greener energy, he appears to disregard the industrialisation and polluting of the countryside as a price worth paying.

Most of the population in this part of the UK depend on our water supplies from underground sources and, once the aquifer becomes contaminated, there is no Plan B. This attitude is a contributory factor as to why I can no longer vote for a party that blindly chases profit at the expense of social responsibility.

No doubt he supported the deregulation of the energy market, and we all know who benefitted from that.

Parking loss risks trade

From: Andy Wilcox, Fernwood Park Villas, Leeds.

WITH regard to the lack of parking in Leeds, we have had a raft of losses of city parking spaces. The most notable car park we lost was without doubt the George Street one, lost to the John Lewis and Victoria Gate stores.

They appear to be white elephants, perhaps due to the lack of affordable parking. We are cutting our own throats by pricing customers out. Please get a grip before we end up with a barren wasteland. Shopping and parking are intrinsically linked.