Villagers fear of truck trips

Cuadrilla, has announced two new exploration sites in Lancashire. Roseacre Wood (Pictured )in Roseacre , Nr Elswick and Little Plumpton of the A583 Preston New Road , Nr blackpool
Pix Dave Nelson — Cuadrilla, has announced two new exploration sites in Lancashire. Roseacre Wood (Pictured )in Roseacre , Nr Elswick and Little Plumpton of the A583 Preston New Road , Nr blackpool Pix Dave Nelson

Roseacre Awareness Group was set up shortly after Cuadrilla Resources announced it would be applying to Lancashire County Council for planning permission to explore deep underground by hydraulically fracturing the rock and pumping chemicals down to extract shale gas.

The findings of a recent Environmental Impact Assessment have been sent out to residents living in the area ahead of a drop-in session to be hosted by Cuadrilla on Thursday.

And the group say they are concerned the proposed 25 trips made by trucks carrying equipment to and from the site per day will disrupt them, along with plans to build a drilling rig between 30 and 53 metres high.

Barbara Richardson, a spokeswoman for the group and Roseacre resident, said: “The amount of traffic from just one site is my concern, and because of the route it’s not just going to affect Roseacre, it’s going to affect Clifton and other places.

“I don’t know how they are going to put these big wagons on our roads because they are bad enough as it is with potholes, and this is going to make it worse.

“We’ve also got images of what the site could look like and it means the rig itself could be 53 metres high, but we won’t know until the plans are in.

“It will be far more visible to a lot of people if it is 53 metres high and that’s going to be there for two years.”

A Cuadrilla spokesmansaid: “We have undertaken a detailed traffic assessment for both of our proposed exploration sites.

“We have found that for both sites (Roseacre Wood and Preston New Road) the average number of HGVs per day is seven (14 two-way movements, seven into the site and seven out) for when the site is being constructed, for drilling, hydraulic fracturing and initial testing (this is around a two year period).

“Given the nature of the development there are inevitably peaks of activity during which traffic will be higher than average.

“The periods of peak movements are of a relatively short duration.

“The Cuadrilla rig which we have previously used, which we would hope to use again, is 30m high, but we have assessed for a rig up to 53m high in the environment Impact Assessment to cover the possibility of another rig being used.”