CAMPAIGNERS in a Gwent village fighting plans for an opencast mine fear their community will be dragged "backwards".

Residents in Varteg are worried about dust, pollution and noise if the plan submitted by Glamorgan Power, is given the go-ahead by Torfaen County Borough Council.

At a public meeting this week, attended by about 60 people, Torfaen council's chief planning and public protection officer Duncan Smith told members of the newly-formed No Opencast campaign the council would take everything, including national policy and health, into account.

The application is expected to go before planners on April 13.

Glamorgan Power has already said it will be "ticking every box" with regard to the health and safety and noise concerns.

It plans to extract 350,000 tonnes of coal over three years from the 62 hectares site, and has pledged £1 for every tonne, a total of £350,000, to go towards local regeneration. A land reclamation scheme is planned after the mining operation concludes.

Campaigners branded the cash pledge "miserable", Mr Duncan said it is not illegal and quite commonplace for developers to offer this kind of planning gain.

The meeting heard from Alison Austin, who lives near the Ffos-y-Fran mine in Merthyr Tydfil.

She said urged residents to fight the plan and said: “The dust is awful and the noise is an absolute nightmare. I send my children to school in Pontypridd, a 60 mile round trip, so they aren’t surrounded by opencast."

Assembly guidlines stipulate the need for a 500 metre buffer-zone around an opencast operation - unless there is an overriding significance in respect of regeneration, employment, and economy.

Tony Kinsella, chairman of No Opencast and vice chairman of Governors at Ysgol Bryn Onnen, the school is strongly opposed to the scheme.

“If we don’t do the right thing for our future generations then I am sure they will look back and say ‘what on earth were they thinking,” he said.

However some residents said they supported the open cast plan if it meant the local landscape was improved and prevented problems such as fly tipping and off road biking.

Mother of three Rayanna Jones of Salisbury Terrace, less than 100 metres from the proposed site, told the Argus: "I'm worried about the kids breathing in the dust and pollution."

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