A rubbish mountain has appeared outside the former fracking site in Fylde after the spot became a magnet for fly-tipping.
Beds, broken cupboards and building material are amongst the items that have been dumped in the entrance to the now abandoned facility on Preston New Road in Little Plumpton.
The detritus has been added to in the days since it first appeared – raising the spectre that it could continue to grow if it becomes regarded by unscrupulous firms and individuals as an easy place to deposit waste unlawfully.
The heap formed so far – which also includes living room furniture and old console games – stretches right across the short piece of road between the highway and the site gate. It is also now inching towards the main road itself.
It is unclear whether the waste that has been dumped is on public or private land. The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) has approached both Fylde Council and Cuadrilla for comment.
It is now five years since energy company Cuadrilla’s dreams of fracking on the Fylde effectively died following a series of earth tremors during work taking place on its shale gas wells. The largest of them – measuring 2.9 on the Richter scale – saw fracking suspended in the area and it never recommenced.
A government moratorium has since been placed on the controversial process, which involves extracting gas from rock by injecting into it water, sand and chemicals under high pressure.
Under planning permission for test drilling originally granted by the government in October 2016, Cuadrilla should have decommissioned the site and restored it to its previous use as an agricultural field by July 2023.
However, as the LDRS revealed last year, Lancashire County Council agreed to a request from the firm for an extension of that deadline until July next year.
All the fencing and surface materials were to be removed within 18 months – by this December – with the final topsoil added within two years and the site fully vacated.
However, the BBC last month reported concern amongst locals that the company “wasn’t doing anything” to meet that timescale – an accusation to which it did not immediately respond.
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