Graham Evans MP holds Fact finding meeting on Fracking
A residents’ fact finding meeting was held tonight at Helsby High School for Helsby, Alvanley and Manley residents to discuss fracking in the area.
Local MP, Graham Evans, organised the meeting with the hope that it would help residents learn more about this subject by quizzing a panel of experts.
"Helsby, Manley and Alvanley have all seen and heard exploratory investigations in the last few weeks,” explained Graham, “However, many people don’t actually know very much about this industry, commonly referred to as fracking, as it’s relatively new to the UK. I wanted to get together a group of people to offer a range of expert viewpoints on the subject, as well as several of the regulators. It is a subject which people have very strong views on which is why I was adamant that we have a panel which consisted of both those for and against fracking. In addition, I invited members of several of the regulating bodies so that residents could ask them about the procedures put in place to monitor any activity which may happen in and around Helsby.”
“My view on fracking is that I see the reasoning behind it, we do need to ensure that we secure our energy supplies. However, I could not and would not agree to anything which would affect the health, safety and wellbeing of my constituents, their homes, businesses or our natural environment. Even before this meeting I wrote to the Minister to seek reassurances on several matters including the decommissioning of the wells who will be responsible for their care and monitoring after they have been “capped off”, waste water – how will this be disposed of safely, and information about the risk to road users in the area with the increase vehicular movement required to service the wells. Tonight’s meeting has raised some more issues, all of which have been noted down and I will take back to the Minister. As soon as I have a response I shall let local residents know.’
The meeting was attended by around 240 people. Each member of the panel was given up to 5minutes to talk on their particular area of expertise/interest. There then followed a question time question and answer style session with members of the audience asking the questions they needed answer on.
“I was pleased with how informative tonight’s meeting was,” said Graham. “My absolute priority was to ensure that residents who may not know too much about fracking left feeling that they knew a lot more, from all different aspects, and the feedback I had from residents already is that this was achieved.”
The Panel was as follows:
On the panel (in alphabetical order)
John Blaymires BSC PhD, CCO from Igas, which is the company who holds the license in this area.
Edward Cottrell BSc(Hons) MRICS, a Frodsham born Chartered Surveyor and registered Valuer
Professor Robert Jackson BSc (Hons), Eur Ing, CEng, FICE, FCIWEM, FGS, PhD, FIStructE, a Professor of Sustainable Enginering Technologies (Water and Environment)
Regulatory Bodies attending
Tony Almond from the Health and Safety Executive
Greg Hodgson from Public Health England
Stephen Molineux from the Environment Agency.