For anyone interested
The official opening of Black Park mine is
Tomorrow Sun 9th from 1130am.
Chance to have a look round (& and take SWMBO to car boot sale!)

Just off Halton island on A5 / A483 bypass from Chirk to Wrexham


Some pictures here
http://northwalesminers.com/info/articles/chirkairfield.htm 

does this mean that the true function of the "mine" is to provide free, or at least un-metered for the cost of pumping, water for agricultural use?

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It is a Well after all,not a Coalmine.

I will post what is said tomorrow.
I do know from talking to him that he believes that he owns the coal rights.
Also his quote was " There is a working mine in North Wales again"

(I am not connected with the adventure. As a member of North Wales Miners Association Trust Ltd I am just reporting local mining events! :smartass: )

There is no such thing as free water!
You still have to have an abstraction licence and pay the Environment Agency a fee.
Even if you have to pump the water to keep your mine dry, you still need a licence.........

There is no such thing as free water!
You still have to have an abstraction licence and pay the Environment Agency a fee.
Even if you have to pump the water to keep your mine dry, you still need a licence.........

that's true, actually. I've done pressure testing on pipelines which involves filling sections of the line with water and pressurising it; you need an abstraction licence to fill the pipe AND another license to put it back where it came from afterwards.

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Going even further off-thread...

Reminds me of when the Conwy Tunnel was under construction (immersed twin-bore dual carriageway tunnel sunk into a muddy estuary on the A55 in North Wales). Crown Estate required a dreding licence (about 90p/m3 from memory) AND a dumping licence for the mud to be discharged off-shore (about £1.10/m3 from memory). Tidal action and river flow partly refilled the cutting between each tide's round of work so many times the volume of the trench was dredged. Quite likely a proportion of the mud dumped off-shore (about 4 miles out from memory) was washed back in on subsequent tides and re-dredged. ::)

No abstraction Licence needed for a Well,only if you pump from a river .
I find it strange that the North Wales Miners Association would report this on their website as a Mine opening,surely its clear to any Ex Miner that the surface infrastructure would be condemned by the first HMI visit,and its just a museum attraction.

From memory, I think there is a minimum quantity that is below the need for a licence. So if you had a well in your garden and pulled domestic water out then you wouldn't exceed the minimum.
If you wanted to start bottling and selling, then yes you would!

Mines don't need an extraction license, but he will probably need a discharge license.

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From memory, I think there is a minimum quantity that is below the need for a licence. So if you had a well in your garden and pulled domestic water out then you wouldn't exceed the minimum.
If you wanted to start bottling and selling, then yes you would!

my house had a well when it was built, in the early 1930s. This was quite common in East Anglia, where ribbon development was common at the time and the water table is only a few feet down. Our well was built over in the 1960s, but at least one well in the row remains in use for gardening water.

There has never been any mention of a licence of any sort.

Asking the question around, any commercial or industrial usage requires a licence. AFAIK, and I have never been directly involved in this side, a mine may use its pumped water for any purpose it sees fit BUT may not dispose of it without complying with detailed licensing and approval procedures, which is only logical considering the likely nature of, say, mill outflow.

I can only agree that "Black Park" does not appear to be a mine in any meaningful sense.

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When I worked at Hinxton we had a borehole that supplied water to the site, we had a licence which stipulated how much we could pump out, if we went over there were financial penalties.

It was a few hundred feet deep as I recall, I dropped the pump down it attempting to lift it out when the cable/hose snapped and we had to buy another one. ::)

From memory, I think there is a minimum quantity that is below the need for a licence. So if you had a well in your garden and pulled domestic water out then you wouldn't exceed the minimum.
If you wanted to start bottling and selling, then yes you would!

Anything more than 20m3/day and you need an abstraction licence from the EA, this should also include coal mines. If discharging any water a discharge licence will also be needed. Although I think the EA are changing the type of abstraction / transfer / discharge licences.

The water may also need some form of treatment - but that will depend on a number of factors.

Also if the Coal Authority owns the shaft a permit / indemnity will be needed

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But Coalmines do not abstract water,they only discharge water,
And settlement ponds have been the law for many years now,to gain permission from the EA to discharge mine water.

I thought it's meant to be a well and not a coal mine. In which case if it's >20m3/day then an abstraction licence could be needed.

http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/business/topics/water/32032.aspx 

Abandoned mines probably have different rules than for active mines.

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Any news from the Sunday opening.

A couple of quotes from BBC articles showing the character of John Pierce the owner
If you read these bits you may understand some of the background :thumbsup:

What is less well-known is the role that might have been played in the Titanic's discovery by Chirk man John Pierce.

The engineer claims to have been the first to identify the ship's location.
It was John's theory which was nearest to what proved to be the truth in the end
Observer journalist Alan Roads

In the 1980s John Pierce had become one of the foremost salvage experts. He investigated the wreck of the Lusitania and raised the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior, off New Zealand.

Pierce was also working alongside the Ministry of Defence (MoD), who, still engaged the Cold War, were keen to develop techniques to help them find submarines lost in deep water.

John Pierce's expertise lay in acquiring and analysing large amounts of data. The quest for the Titanic was like searching for any other vessel: "It was a question of two currents. The iceberg wouldn't be there... unless the Labrador current had been effective. Then it catches the gulf stream, then goes to the north east."

The Titanic
1,517 people died when the Titanic sank on 14 April 1912

Pierce particularly paid tribute to the Titanic's navigator Joseph Boxhall: "Boxhall was an extremely good navigator and he'd done the last sighting at 12 O'Clock."
If you read these bits you may understand some of the background :thumbsup:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/shropshire/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_8961000/8961877.stm 

A north Wales landowner who has declared "independence" in a row over council tax finally paid up the day before he was due to appear in court.
Mr Pierce, 63, claimed his farm near Chirk was not included in the act which joined England and Wales in 1535.
He said the documents proved his home at Halton was under the Lordship of Traian, one of 13 Marches lordships not covered.

"These old laws are binding on magistrates and they would have no right to order me to pay tax to any council.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_east/4339168.stm 

this is all getting a bit wierd.

http://www.paullee.com/titanic/titanicfound.html  or one of several similar pieces scattered around the internet. Note that in this one, JP doesn't claim to have FOUND the Titanic, he is only attributed an an unproven source for the story that Royal Navy found it.

http://articles.latimes.com/1985-12-01/news/mn-5488_1_british-court  what a busy chap he must have been... or how little attention some tabloid journalists pay to what they publish....

Certainly no commercial operator would have had access to that sort of equipment in the 1970s. The location of the Titanic was no great secret. It had been on a commercial run, on a well established route, and its position had been given as normal. The Carpathian located the survivors using that information.

The behaviour of ships once sunk had been extensively researched by the Royal Navy and USN after the Second World War, so the approximate location of the wreck was well known. Given the number of wrecks there actually are on the seabed, and the great depth and remote location of the wreck, I find it very difficult to believe that anyone found the wreck unless they were looking for it and knew more-or-less where to look; most likely as an exercise to attempt to locate a wreck of approximately known position under those conditions. The non-military character of Titanic would mean that it was about as private as it was possible to be.

I notice the story about coal extraction from his land gets a mention here, as well.

http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/titanic-biography/john-pearce.html 

http://www.underwaterheritage.co.nz/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9:rainbow&catid=1:north-island&Itemid=4  is about the best one I can find regarding the raising of the Rainbow warrior, by the Royal New Zealand Navy; there is no mention of Mr Pierce at all, but an quite different name is attributed as the Project Manager.

The story about the claiming independence is an urban legend, on a par with the ones about Berwick still being at war with Russia or that chap who tried to declare independence on an old anti-aircraft fort in the Medway.

I await the next contribution with interest!

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All I can say is
You couldn't make it up! 😮
" Don't let facts spoil a good story"

At one time he had Three Dragon Rapide aircraft.
He still has one in a hanger ( we saw it on Sun)
They owned the land when Black Park was operating.
When it closed coal was opencast leaving a big hole where the airfield / carboot is now which he had filled.
The tail runs that prisoners from Shrewsbury jail on day release did the work.
The farm stands on a pillar of coal but most of the surroundings have been removed.

doesn't much suprise me that there is a history of open-cast coal mining around there.

In passing, the airbags used in conjunction with the Rainbow Warrior were apparently auxiliary bouyancy used to counteract the list, which is fairly usual for small-vessel salvage ( 410 tones displacement ) in shallow water. To talk of salvaging a major vessel using airbags, or using airbags at such a depth, could charitably be described as unprecedented.

Usual method would be employing a floating dry-dock, as was done for the German Fleet at Scapa Flow or the Kursk in recent years.

It all reminds me rather of "yer man" at Trago Mills, with his open feuding with various parties and statue of himself outside.

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