SOME 100 residents living near the M65 at Blackburn Road, Darwen, meeting highways officials on February 4, were more or less told that it would cost too much to calm the noise from the motorway by raising fencing and erecting a baffle of the plastic sheets on its southern side like those on the northern one.

Two thirds of the people affected are pensioners like us and can do without any hassle after working hard all our lives.

Our feelings can, therefore, be imagined on reading (LET, February 25) that further along from our area, they are going to resurface the same motorway, not for the peace of human beings peace, but for owls.

We love birds and feed them every day. But if it is thought owls are going away from the Castle Clough site at Hapton is it not because they have flown away to a more peaceful place?

If the Highways Agency think that we will do the same, they can think again. The fight will go on.

MR AND MRS G BLACKWELL, on behalf of residents of Blackburn Road, Darwen.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.