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Yesterday (27 September), hundreds of residents joined a walk along the proposed Wirral route of the controversial Peak Cluster pipeline.
As reported by the Wirral Globe, more than 300 people turned up for the start of the 'PipeWalk' at the Devon Doorway pub in Heswall.
The route took walkers, cyclists, and everyone who joined through Pensby, Irby, Greasby, and to West Kirby, continuing to Meols Drive, then the King Charles III coastal path, and finished at the Green Hut café in Moreton.
The PipeWalk, as it was nicknamed, was supported by tractor convoys and a motorcade and even a rocking horse as concerned residents, farmers, and others joined in to try to protest the pipeline.
According to reports, more than half (150) people went the full distance, with around 250 seen on the final leg of the journey.
The Peak Cluster project is a proposed scheme to reduce carbon emissions from four cement and lime plants in Derbyshire and Staffordshire. It would capture the carbon dioxide produced by the sites and send it through a 200km pipeline to empty gas fields beneath Morecambe Bay, where it would be stored.
Campaign group Action Against CCS, which formed in January and organised the event, said serious questions remain about the project's environmental, financial and health and safety impacts.
In a statement, Action Against CCS said: "People did not turn out simply because of house prices or what might happen on their own doorstep. They came because they care about something much bigger.
People in the area care about ecology, wildlife and the local countryside, the group said.
Residents and the council have expressed their opposition to the Peak Cluster, even as the route was recently changed. Wirral West MP Matthew Patrick said he was 'hugely disappointed' with the amended route, because not much had changed in the Wirral.
The campaign group also said that serious questions remain over the Peak Cluster proposals, like "pipeline safety, emergency planning, environmental impacts and the short- and long-term financial implications for the taxpayer".
However, they highlighted that despite concerns, people came together because of their goal of opposing the pipeline.
