I FIND it alarming that so many educated people continue to advocate the Northern Quarter for human habitation when the site is an opencast landfill basin containing toxic backfill.

One only has to attend the lectures of Mr Paul Morgan, an experienced mining surveyor, to understand the real dangers of building on the Northern Quarter.

As an experienced caver, trained in hydraulics and pneumatics as well as development engineering, I also understand the hidden dangers all too well and have been trying my hardest, apparently without success so far, to stress the dangers of the site upon my fellow councillors.

I have also been photographing the site and taking water level soundings from the shafts of Hawkwell northwards of the Northern Quarter.

At the base of the shaft are two rock tunnels leading to a labyrinth of old workings reaching up to the top of the Ruardean True-Blue gale which also contains an opencast basin.

With a difference of approximately 400 feet between the opencast basin at Ruardean and the opencast at Northern Quarter, plus the subterranean depths, there is huge force of pressure at work.

The force of this pressure presents a potential disaster to any building works and to future inhabitants of the area.

Yet this aspect has been ignored or somehow allowed through the district council planning process.

Furthermore, a late Homes and Community Agency planning application that claims the whole area is now safely contained within an opencast site is actually double its real size.

This inaccurate subterfuge has misled the Coal Authority, Environment Agency, and the Forest of Dean planning committee.

The question remains whether the Forestry Commission, and DEFRA are now capable of examining the evidence that the presence of gas, toxic waste and mine entry collapse are the reality of this site.

So, what happens when the underground drainage of the area (currently acting as a relief valve) whether the upper or lower series of seams (emerging at Whitecroft and or Norchard) collapses?

Such an event has been predicted by Mr Morgan. In my lifetime alone, a mudflow sourced at no more than a head of 50 feet suddenly opened up from the local True Blue colliery and took out local piggeries with all the animals, and swamped three cottages.

Despite protective walls being in place, the whole lot had to be demolished.

On this occasion it was the lives of pigs and poultry that could not rise above the torrent.

The legal claims were eventually settled in court, but the fact remains that ‘the faceless speculators’ (as MP Paul Marland once called them) never learn from past mistakes when faced with short-term speculative opportunities.

Mining Surveyor, Paul Morgan, said that despite now being elderly, he simply felt that it would be unforgivable not to speak out against these dangerous proposals.

His paper, commissioned by the Verderers, is a detailed assessment of the facts concerning Northern Quarter and is a crucial read for anyone interested in the truth.

Finally, is there anyone who would wish to live in dwellings or book accommodation in a hotel constructed within the confines amid an opencast site, with the threat of toxic emissions arising from its depths of landfill deposits at any time?

– Cllr Andrew Gardiner (Ind), Forest of Dean District Council, Lydbrook and Ruardean.