Petition in campaign against using moors site MARCH: The anti-mining demonstration sets off from Todmorden Town Hall PROTESTORS against a mile-long clay and coal mine on the moors between Burnley and Todmorden are to lobby county councillors and present a protest petition to the Environment Agency.

The campaign against plans to mine thousands of tonnes of clay and coal from a moorland site at Thieveley Pike was given a Samba send-off on Saturday when more than 50 protestors met outside Todmorden Town Hall.

The site is in Lancashire but access would be from Calderdale with up to 80 heavy lorries travelling through the Walsden and Todmorden area each day.

Saturday's day of action was launched by the Mayor of Todmorden, Joe Rez, when people carrying banners calling for "No Moor Mines" were led in a march along Burnley Road by a Samba band.

Coun Rez thanked people for their support and said the mining plan had to be resisted.

The campaigners were planning to take part in a "Walk the Watershed" 40-mile three day protest March to County Hall, Preston, but the application has now been put back to a future date not yet decided. One of the campaigners, Penny Eastwood, of local group Treesponsibility, said the march would go ahead once a new date was fixed.

In the meantime a small group were to attend Lancashire County Council headquarters tomorrow to lobby members before going on to the Environment Agency offices in Bamber Bridge to hand over a 300-name protest collected on Saturday.

Penny said: "We are concerned that the whole area is geologically unstable. We have had landslips which we say are due to previous mining and only last year there were devastating floods in Todmorden and Hebden Bridge.

"We think sediment from the mine will block culverts and make us more vulnerable to more flooding in the future."

Local people were concerned about the traffic problems such a massive application would cause. They were also concerned that the contours of the hill could never be the same again if a mile long area was mined.

Treesponsibility have a six hectare site only half a mile away from the proposed mining area where they were trying to get a community woodland established on a severely eroding hillside.

She added: "We are not only opposing the application but want to be positive in getting the whole area restored. Being on the edge of both Lancashire and Calderdale it has been tremendously neglected in the past."