MORE than 1,000 people have now signed up to oppose plans to build a power station in Cresswell.
Around 50 people heard how our campaign against plans for the proposed gas-fired station Blythe Park industrial estate is gaining momentum.
As well as gathering 850 names on a written petition and another 170 objections on the Number 10 website, the group has:
Completed a 50-page document outlining our opposition to the plans Secured £3,000 towards the estimated £10,000 cost of legal and planning experts needed to fight the application Continuing appeals to seek more volunteers to help with fund-raising and finding more opponents to the scheme.
Villagers Voice Staffordshire Moorlands chairman Darren Tranter said: "My message for tonight is about objections, objections, objections.
"It is important that everyone sends an email or writes letters to express their opposition to these plans because that is the only way that people's voices will be heard.
"If Staffordshire moorlands District Council does oppose the plans as we expect them to, then the application will go to a full public enquiry.
"Ultimately we will be able to have our voices forward, but you need to have responded for that to happen."
The 50-page document, which has taken two months to complete, highlights around 18 objections to the proposals put forward by Blythe Park Power, including ecological, highways and environmental concerns.
The full report of our objections is available by clicking this link.
Meanwhile, concerns were again raised above the remediation of the Blythe Park industrial Park on the former mill site.
For those not aware, a firm called Scentarea - a firm of which Malcolm Barrett is a director - gained planning permission from Staffordshire Moorlands District Council to deal with - remediate - some other toxic materials found on this site as a result of the operations of the colour works over recent decades. These include cadmium.
Anyway, the plans - approved in 2005 - involve digging a three-metre deep trench into which the materials could be contained before being sealed with a layer of clay.
As remediation work got underway in the late summer and autumn, residents became alarmed after lorries taking clay into the site left moored on the roads around Cresswell and into Draycott.
Residents fear, perhaps with justification, that the mess created by a small-scale remediation project such as this would be multiplied by several times if there were 100 wagons a day moving on and off the site.
Some residents expressed anger at the speed and extent of response by the environmental health department at the district council.
However, Mr Tranter stressed that the issue over highways highlighted the need by all residents to record and log any problems and calls to the relevant authorities about the problems reading experience.
After all, these could be important points to raise in the event of a public inquiry.