“We are very disappointed that today MPs have not used their vote to protect our precious designated landscapes,” says CPRE Sussex Director, Kia Trainor. “Allowing fracking on the fringes of and underneath National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty will affect their setting and conflict with the very purpose of their designation.”
 
Sussex has one of the highest percentages of protected areas in the country. More than half of West Sussex falls into this category, with large areas designated as National Park or AONB. Under this new legislation, deep fracking would be allowed under all the county’s well loved beauty spots as long as the infrastructure supporting the drilling was kept outside the protected area.
 
 “Allowing fracking underneath protected sites is a serious U-turn on previous Government announcements,” says CPRE Sussex Chairman, David Johnson. “Extensive exploitation of whatever shale oil reserves may in fact underlie the South Downs National park and on the High Weald ANOB would have a grave and long-lasting environmental impact on very special and much reassured areas of our countryside.”
 
Geologists surveying the South Downs National Park have raised concerns that the area may be unsuitable for fracking due to the formation of the rock which has high-angle geological faults. There are fears that fracking around these faults could contaminate water supplies by forming pathways into aquifers and rivers.

“The quantities of toxic chemicals permitted and used for hydrocarbon extraction by methods employed in the stable land-masses of the USA are inappropriate for use in areas of complex faulted geology,” says CPRE fracking expert, Alan Clifford Smith.

Photos @ BiteYourBum.com Photography