Crematorium could be fed by 'dangerous' gas

They say it would detract from the Croal/Irwell Valley's natural glory after years of tipping.

What rubbish. To cap it all, the council's lawyers seem to be worried that grave digging might release dangerous gasses.

Well, they do have a point, such sites do tend to produce plenty, so we're told.

So why not go really "green" and include a crematorium in the scheme? It could be fed from the gas, so clearing the ground to make grave-digging a much safer operation.

In that way, two birds could be killed with one stone, so to speak!

Bolton Council's stance on the above scheme would have more credibility if their past policy had been one of continued opposition to the re-opening of old landfill sites, but it hasn't. Kearsley has its own "Bull Hill" otherwise known as Singing Clough.

Some 40 years ago the then Kearsley Council decided, rightly in my view, to have it in-filled so as to produce a levelled area that could eventually be used as a park and/or play area.

After years of dust and inconvenience to the surrounding residents, the job was completed, the area grassed over and the site allowed to lie fallow while it settled.

Unfortunately, about that time, events overtook the good intentions of Kearsley's guardians when Kearsley -- and Singing Clough -- were swallowed whole by Big Brother, Bolton. To the planners and schemers who gained control, Singing Clough was simply an open area of land that annoyingly needed to have its grass cut from time to time and money spent on it if the old guardians' intentions were to be honoured. So they came up with a good wheeze: "Let's use our powers as a planning authority to act as judge and jury and change the site into industrial land," one can almost hear them mutter. "We can then enter into partnership with a company willing to front a scheme to build industrial units.

"We can apply for whatever grants are available from whoever are daft enough to let us have them and so spend countless thousands of pounds of public money on digging up all the dangerous rubbish and filth that lies to a depth of some 60 feet or more.

"We'll find somewhere to put it -- the adjacent railway cutting is a convenient first option -- then we'll spend more vast sums on trucking in some 'clean' in-fill to level up the land. We'll have to cap the old mine-shafts, of course, if we can find them. It wouldn't do to have one collapse underneath someone.

"It'll take some two years of muck, dust, noise and road congestion to get to that stage, but, the site is a good four miles from the Town Hall, so it shouldn't cause us too much inconvenience.

"We'll need to gain main road access to the site, of course, so we'll arrange to demolish two or three inconveniently-placed houses and make the already busy Stoneclough Road junction into a four-way one. Another pair of traffic signals and a few extra white lines should do the trick It'll also save us the expense of otherwise altering the main road to slow down those dratted speedsters who expect to get from Pilkington Road to Longcauseway in under 10 minutes .... "

Of course, there is another option to all this -- land-swop. In this way Bolton would gain control of Bull Hill and so be able to keep its flora and fauna undisturbed, while the developers could achieve for Kearsley what its residents have always known it to be -- the dead end of the borough!

Tom Wolstencroft

Highfield Street

Kearsley