Plan to plant community woodland on Burscough landfill site is revealed

Sep 6 2012 by Jamie Bowman, Ormskirk Advertiser

A PLAN to turn a Burscough landfill site into seven hectares of community woodland has been unveiled by Lancashire County Council.

Investigations into the feasibility of planting trees on the site on Platts Lane have been carried out after a similar scheme proposed for an area on Mill Dam Lane in Ormskirk were rejected due to the site being too small.

The new proposal is part of an overall project called Woodlands From Waste which has seen the council partner with Blackpool Council and their contractor, Global Renewals Lancashire, who process the household waste of 1.4m people in Lancashire.

Global Renewals plan to extract reusable organic waste before transforming it into a high quality compost which will then be used to plant 2.5m trees across Lancashire.

Further analysis of the impact of the new site is being undertaken with the main issues involving possible contamination to local water supplies by the recycled waste, the risk of methane gas escaping from the land fill site and problems with overall access to the remote site.

The report, which is set to be discussed next week, said: “For some years the Council has considered the possibility of using the closed landfill sites in Burscough as community woodland sites but has never achieved sufficient funding to implement such a scheme. “Woodlands From Waste is an opportunity to work in partnership with a scheme that can achieve those aims and provide a valuable recreational and environmental asset for the Borough.”

Mark Gordon, Woodland Development Manager for Global Renewals Lancashire said that he was hopeful the development would get the go-ahead.

He said: “We would be very keen to get involved with this site which we feel is ideal for the Woodlands From Waste project.

“In many ways it is a blank canvas and the benefits for the public and local wildlife would be very significant.”