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The Heartlands Business Park continues to progress at lightning speed with most of the roads within the business park now surfaced (tarred). The main dual carraifeway through the business park is virtually complete with road markings and rumble strips. The main thrust of the works continues to be the footways and verges with various services being installed – water & gas mains, electric cables, BT ducts and street-lightingetc. The new road network (see below) ties in to the existing network at the west end of the site, and while diversions are still in place it will not be too long before these are lifted. The temporary traffic lights have been removed from the areas around the new roundabout and traffic is free flwoing along the B7066. The road leading down from the junction of Polkemmet Road and West Main Street to the B7066 has been blocked off since the 7th July, this the part of the road marked in red in the first image, traffic continues to be diverted through the Murraysgate Industrial Estate from the B7066 to West Main Street. This is marked in blue.
For those residents living at the west end, it may add possibly no more than a few minutes to the journey and the same applies to those coming from the west coming into Whitburn. Unfortunately it means that bus services to the west will also be diverted e.g. the X14 to and from Glasgow. Passengers will have to use the nearest bus stop before the diversion road. Once completed, the diversion through the industrial estate will be lifted. Every effort will be made to ensure disruptions are kept to a minimum but it is worth noting that this is a major road construction project and a level of inconvenience will be inevitable. Secondly, bear in mind that with the new roundabout getting on and off the B7066 at the west end will now be safer. Heartlands is going into space
The name of Heartlands is getting well known around, Whitburn, West Lothian and Scotland as well as around the world courtesy of this website. But how about to infinity and beyond? to use a well known phrase. NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) are beginning a program to return humans to the moon which would act as a stepping stone to extend mankind’s presence in the solar system. In November 2008 they will be launching the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) which will comprehensively map the lunar surface with the objectives to finding safe landing sites, locate potential resources, characterise the radiation environment etc. How does Heartlands fit in? Names have been collected and placed onboard a microchip which will be fitted to the LRO spacecraft and the name of Heartlands is just one of those names on this special microchip which will be orbiting the moon by the end of this year. So if E.T. is out there, check Heartlands out. Open Cast Contractors complete work.Minrec, the contractors after 4 years on site have completed their part of the Heartlands Development and will be leaving the site.. Their primary role was to remove the "burning" bing, the old workings and other areas of dereliction by open cast mining and then restore the land to a condition fit for future development. The reclamation work on the Heartlands site will now be undertaken by Ecosse Regeneration Ltd themselves who will prepare the land and start to build the infrastructure throughout the housing areas of Heartlands. The Heartlands Business Park infrastructure, as can be seen elsewhere in this website, is being built by R J McLeod while the golf courses are being developed by Terra Firma Developments. Taiwan delegation visit Heartlands
On Monday 15th June Ecosse Regeneration Ltd was honoured to receive a delegation from the 10th Taiwan British Business Council (TBBC) as they visited Scotland. Organised in conjunction with UK Trade & Investment the delegation representing the Regeneration & Renewables sector and were taken around the Heartlands site to see for themselves one of the largest brown field regeneration projects in Europe. On their return they were shown presentations by Ecosse & West Lothian Council before heading along to Ecosse’s Managing Director Terry Walker’s office suit for lunch. The Heartlands visit was only part of a larger trip around central Scotland which included visiting the Blacklaw Wind Farm (visible from the south site of the Heartlands site) and Leith to see how this once run down area was being regenerated into a vibrant 21st century location. The delegation was just one many as part of the overall visit by the TBBC. Other groups included those looking at the banking & financial sector and the ICT/Telecoms sector and they headed off to various projects and organisations such as The Scottish Micro Electronics Centre and Standard Life. Staying in the Edinburgh Hilton, the delegates were honoured guests at a lavish reception held in Edinburgh Castle hosted by Sir Thomas Harris (Vice-Chairman of Standard Chartered Bank) & Leslie Koo (Chairman of TBBC). Guests of honour at the reception were the Rt Hon Lord Steel (David Steel) and Taiwanese Vice Minister of the Ministry of Economic Affairs Fadah Hsieh. West Lothian’s Provost Tom Kerr, West Lothian Counsellors Jim Dickson and Jim Swan and Ecosse Project Manager Alex Muirhead joined the delegation for the group photograph. The Beechgrove Garden visit the site (updated 21 June)
The Heartlands Development site was host to The Beechgrove Garden on Thursday 5th June. Jim McColl, star of the hit BBC Scotland horticultural TV programme came along with his director, cameraman and soundman and spent a good 6 hours filming around the old Polkemmet Colliery site. Jim’s guest for the day was his long time friend, Donald Wemyss, Ecosse Regenerations’s tree and horticultural consultant. This piece went out on Wednesday 18th June. Filming started at around 10.30 am around Bing 2 on the eastern fringe of the site just north of where the old “burning bing 3 used to stand. Jim did a short piece to camera and then introduced Donald who explained the story behind the development. What the Beechgrove Garden were here to find out was how locally produced green compost, created from household garden waste was being combined with screened and processed colliery waste from the bings to create a topsoil for building the Donald Ross Memorial golf courses. On what is basically 120Ha of derelict land, topsoil would normally be brought in at great expense and laid on the surface. However, Ecosse Regeneration Ltd, innovators as they are have reduced the need to import topsoil and subsoil bringing a whole host of associated environmental and economic benefits. Using one camera instead of the normal two, there were a few takes recorded so that, once edited viewers to the programme would see a seamless interplay between Donald and Jim from a variety of angles. This actually carried on for the rest of the day. Jim and Donald were shot walking towards the camera, then shot walking away from the camera. There were multiple close-up shots, Jim was recorded talking to the camera, Donald was shot replying and so on. Occasionally it didn’t work first time and in the usual tradition of show business it was “take 2 or even take 3” It was fascinating to watch the interaction between “actors” Jim and Donald, the director and cameraman and sound engineer. It was a very windy day and although the hairy windshield covering the expensive Sennheiser shot gun microphone did a great job cutting out the wind noise occasionally a second or third take was needed as the wind was just too strong. Jim and Donald were also mic’ed up with sensitive tie pin radio mics so that long shots of them wandering around the site could be recorded. The director would suggest a certain shot, the cameraman would pitch in, either to agree or disagree for some technical reason and suggest an alternative shot. These were all professionals at the top of their game doing a thoroughly professional job in quite difficult conditions. The site is still a working site with excavators, massive dump trucks and other plant still working away and occasionally recording was halted to allow a dozer or truck to pass by, either because it ruined the continuity of the shot or they were too noisy.
After a while, recording around Bing 2 was completed and “in the can” and we all moved on deeper into the site where Jim and Donald did a piece to camera with a massive RH120 excavator. This was overseen by Mick McDaid, the Minrec Operations manager who carefully and safely choreographed the RH120 and was on his walkie talkie making sure the driver placed his bucket in a certain spot, moved the jib at a certain speed and so on. All this so that just as the bucket rested on the ground, Jim and Donald would come into shot. Needless to say, this took a couple of takes, but once completed it made for an impressive shot. Jim was also seen climbing into the cab of a mighty Caterpillar 777 and after a short piece to camera drove it away……..or was it really him driving? Sorry, that’s a show biz secret !. After a short lunch we moved to the west of the site where the crushed colliery waste and green compost were stockpiled and it was here that Donald and Jim were shot discussing in more detail the merits of creating the ideal growing medium for use on the golf course. Close up shots of Donald holding a handful of colliery waste or green compost were recorded then we headed onto the golf courses, onto the fairway on No 2 hole on the west course. Jim was now able to see the results of all the work undertaken by all concerned. He was standing on a very lush green fairway, one which had the ideal rate of percolation, rate of growth and so on. All this from discarded household garden waste and recycled bing material. Considering he has been a horticulturalist for over 50 years and has probably seen it all, Jim McColl was very impressed with what he was seeing.
More recording was done from various angles, they discussed a small plug of fairway which had been carefully prepared earlier so that they could discuss how well the roots had taken, proof that the mixture of the two wastes had combined to create the ideal substance. Jim, with golf club in hand then swung at a golf ball which flew majestically into the distance, all for TV!! Once “in the can” we moved on to another part of the golf course which overlooked the Polkemmet Moor. What used to be Greenrigg Colliery has now been shaped to form 6 holes at the west of the site contoured to replicate the rolling nature of the area with the backdrop of the Pentlands. The idea is to make the area around the golf course seamlessly mesh the natural surroundings. On a feature beside Hole 7, Jim McColl was in for another surprise. Growing in among the heather on the bing material (remember, this is off the golf course to the side) was Club Moss. Jim had known about this kind of moss but had never come across it and he was genuinely pleased to see it growing so healthily in the wild, on a small area which has been retained as a natural feature. He admitted that moss was something he tried to get rid of, from lawns and such like in the course of his work but this moss was different. Donald explained that this variety of moss and the bing are actually distant cousins. Coal afterall is fossilised plant material and while other plants would die, decay and over thousands of years turn into coal, this Cub Moss hung on and was now basically feeding off its relatives. Jim and Donald then planted young hazel and willow trees at the side of the Hole 7 then moved onto the viewing point behind hole 5. This is one of the highest point on the site where there will be viewing galleries overlooking the golf courses and when applicable a TV camera tower. The Donald Ross Memorial Courses are being built to such a specification that it is hoped to attract televised tournaments such as the Ryder cup, the Scottish Open and so on. From here Donald and Jim (and the camera) looked over most of the Heartlands Development and discussed to camera the merits, the importance and the significance of what was being created here. This was a blend of the old and the new. Recycling at its very best using new techniques for creating a cost effective and green growing material. Eventually it “was a wrap” and we headed back to Cult Farm for a well deserved brew and where I recorded a short audio interview with Jim. I asked him what he thought of what he had just seen: “It’s an eye opener. When you take a passing glimpse at the thing, you think chaos, like a bomb has hit it. However when you go around the site like we have done today and see how it’s tackled in such a systematic way and how each stage of the process is followed, it is absolutely fantastic. If you thought of the thing as a oner you would probably go bananas but by taking each bit and giving it due regard depending on what it is and what it used to be it is just phenomenal. It is such a huge site and everyone knows what they are doing and I think that is just fantastic, absolutely fantastic.”Jim was then asked about the recycling aspects of the project: “As a horticulturalist who has been in the business for more than 50 years I was fascinated by the recycling of the pit waste. The way it has been graded out and then it becomes the principal medium for growing fairway turf. Regarding the ‘magic’ mix (referring to the use of the compost together with the pit waste) the business of recycled garden waste is one of the things closest to my heart at the present time. People are still suspicious of it, they don’t understand the way in which the garden waste is processed. It is pasteurised, just like they pasteurise milk. It is heated to a certain temperature for a period time to get rid of weeds and other stuff. Like milk, all the harmful organisms are killed off while keeping all the nutrients, the good stuff. So the pasteurised garden waste is perfectly safe to use in the ground. The more the public see the results of using it, the more they will be convinced that there is a need for it. The compost on its own has no mineral content while the coal waste has no organic material and it is there in abundance. Put the two together, 75% coal waste, 25% compost and you get this free draining magic mix providing ideal conditions for growing grass. Looking at the plug of fairway we turned up earlier while filming you could see that the roots of the grass were well down into the soil. It’s staggering and just shows what modern techniques and science can do especially as the fairways were only sown around 9 months ago.”The Club Moss was of interest to Jim: “Well I’ve read about it and always thought of it as this rarity from the ice age. Club Moss was just a name in my head and I’d never seen it. It is almost a prehistoric plant and yet here it is in the middle of all this dereliction and it is clinging on to life because the conditions suit it. It is one of the paradoxes of gardening that things come up in the strangest places”The interview was concluded with some words of wisdom: “The central basin of Scotland at one time was a bog and before that would have had a lot of trees and here we see this thing come full circle. It is such a mega site (or sight!) and as it starts to reach completion it is going to act as the most enormous spur to tackle other sites around the country that may face the same problems. “It’s stinking, it’s derelict, you cannot do anything with it” – well oh yes you can. Heartlands shows what can be done. We have climate change and therefore we have different types of weather patterns happening so everything we know is going to be tested. All the principals on how we’ve grown plants and created landscapes for the last several hundred years are going to be tested. Who knows, but Heartlands may just be the kind of forerunner of how things will happen. It’s just brilliant!”
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Phasing page updated
The progress map has been updated to reflect the situation as of March / April 2008.
Tree Removal Underway (updated 20 March 2008)
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As can be seen from the various photos the tree replacement programme throughout the site and in particular the Polkemmet Road and Cultsykefoot Lane is well under way. For the duration of the work on Polkemmet Road traffic management systems have been in place i.e. temporary traffic lights and the carriageway reduced to one lane (the southbound sid). This has allowed the tree surgeons to cut down the overhanging limbs of the trees safely before pulling the main part of the tree back into the fields. However one tree towards the bottom end of Polkemmet Road hung so far over the road that the traffic was halted from each end. Cuts were made into the base of the tree and ropes tied before the tree was felled in one go. The thumbnail image shows the tree on the way down but the full size image shows three images side by side. For the residents of Polkemmet Road, some of whom have been there since the early 60s it was one of these moments, emotional or otherwise to watch these trees, having been in their lives for over 40 years, reduced to heaps of broken wood. Once it was explained why the trees were getting removed and that they wouyld be replaced, most accepted the situation without question. These tree are dead or dying and most areriddled with a fungal disease which make them dangerous. This fungus has the ability to penetrate deep into the centre of large trees producing a heart rot which leaves the decayed wood in a brittle condition which can can cause failure of the tree with little or no warning. It cannot be emphasised enough that these tree arenot being removed for the sake of aesthetics, these trees are coming down because they are now a danger to the public and motorists. Sentiment and history cannot be used as an excuse for retaining these trees when they are now potential death traps.
"What comes down must go up!" Ecosse Regeneration Ltd are spending nearly half a million pounds replacing the trees that are being removed. A massive tree replacement programme within the Heartlands Development site including Polkemmet Road has been initiated by Ecosse, spending almost £400,000 on an order of over 2500 semi-mature ( 4 - 5 m tall) trees from Bellwood Trees in Perth. The replacement trees will be more suited to the area and will consist of varieties such as Rowan, Acer, Oak, Alder,Chestnut, Ash & Pine and in fact some of the Pine will be around 7 m tall. Also be planting alongside the semi-mature trees will be thousands of smaller "whip trees" i.e those with a height of 1.5 m or less. While it will not be like for like, afterall it is mostly Beech trees that are coming down, it will give a greater variety of shape and colour to the surroundings especially in the Autumn. It will be a more modern and hopefully aesthetically pleasing landscape. Normally developers building typical housing schemes will plant young trees <2m high but Ecosse are creating the Heartlands Development which is anything but typical. They want to improve the landscape and are only removing trees where necessary so while they accept that the removal of any tree can be an emotive issue it is one they are not taking lightly. Under normal circumstances the trees would be allowed to see out their days through natural wastage but most are in such bad state that they have been deemed too dangerous to be allowed to remain.
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Ecosse Regeneration Ltd have always maintained from the very beginning that the housing, business park etc would be built around existing tree lines and where possible avoid removing any trees. However Mother Nature has played her hand is deciding their fate and as most of them were planted between around 1790 to 1820 the trees have now come to or are nearing the the end of their natural life cycle and are running out of steam. Beech is by far the most predominant kind of tree onthe site accounting for nearly 98% of the population and although they are not particularly suited for this area i.e wetter soils and high altitude, they have done reasoanbly well and have grown to around 60% of their expected size (in optimum conditions) but have nowsimply come to the end of their natural life. 30% of the trees on the site have already gone through natural wastage but a survey has found that around half of those remaining are in a dangerous condition through age or disease and have to be removed, sooner rather than later. A lot of them are suffering from Heart Rot, which is a fungal disease caused by broken bark exposing the underlying wood to the fungus, and typically manifests as a conk or mushroom at the site of infection. A useful rule of thumbmight be that a cubic foot of wood has decayed for each conk produced. If the tree is growing vigorously, rot will be confined to a small central core and may be overcome but if the tree is weakened and fresh wood exposed by storm damage etc, the fungal infection can advance to more and more wood, rotting away the central core of the tree. Basically this would render the tree fragile and ultimately dangerous. Please note that Heart Rot fungi do not invade living wood of healthy trees. Some of the trees are also suffering from Honey Fungus (armillaria) which makes the roots soft and stringy making the tree susceptible to displacement in high winds. Most of the time these diseases may go unnoticed but the wood has become so brittle that large limbs can break off without warning. Even the trees that are being left could be suffering but there is no way to check without an invasive scan which would further compromise the health of the tree. Visually the tree could look sound but inside would be a different matter. It would be just too expensive and time consuming to scientifically check each tree and it has been reckoned that up to 98% of the whole tree population on the site could be suffering to one degree or another.
It is not just disease that affects trees. Despite their size, trees are very sensitive to changing conditions in the soil. Trees that were planted and matured an acidic soil will suffer badly if for some reason the soil becomes alkaline. . If the water table changes this will also have an affect on the tree. Trees like any plants obviously need water but in the rightamount. If the water table rises by so much as half a metre the roots end up in too much water and the tree drowns. Conversely if the water table drops the health of the tree suffers. Trees are surface rooters and the roots cannot survive at depths below 1.4 m as there is no natural oxygen below that depth and the roots will chase the water as it goes down but eventually suffocate. Polkemmet Road has been particularly affected and out of the whole tree line down the length of the road, only two trees will be spared, the rest having been classed as dangerous. There weren't as many trees in Polkemmet Road as you would think, it's an optical illusion as it is merely, what is called scrub between the trees. Scrub is the original hawthorn hedges growing out of control or dumped garden rubbish taken root and growing wild.
This section has been written in conjunction with the Ecosse tree and horticultural consultant.
Housing Developers announced
The names of the housing developers can now be released. Most are Scottish based and range from volume house builders down to those who specialise is creating homes that little bit different. What this means is that Heartlands, rather than be just another housing development with all the houses looking will be a mixture of shapes, sizes & designs creating sustainable communities and lifestyles in an unique development and the first of its kind in Scotland. The developers are as follows (in no particular order):
Living Villages
Highmore Homes
Applecross
Stewart Milne Group
Caledonia Homes
Bellway
Details regarding plots, timescales etc will be placed on this site as it becomes available.
Website changes
With the ending of the open cast coal mining and the announcement of the housing developers the focus of this website will change. The changes will mean a different logo, a new colour scheme, different sections within the website and so on. Some of the content highlighting the coaling will be removed or amended and other sections re-written to tie in with the change of focus. The final version of the Heartlands / Polkemmet Reclamation website has been archived for posterity and those pages that are removed will be availabe for downloading as a PDF document from the Downloads page (a subsection of Contacts). These changes are on-going (mostly behind the scenes) but it is hoped that the website will continue to the best source of information regarding the Heartlands Development.
Donald Ross Memorial Courses on BBC Scotland
A piece on the construction of the golf courses was shown on the BBC Scotland news on Tuesday 12th February. Highlighting the use of recycled crushed and graded colliery material it also featured an appearance by ex Polkemmet miner and ex Provost Joe Thomas. The video clip can be viewed by clicking on the name BBC Scotland anywhere in this piece. Please note that it will bring up the external BBC video player and that the content belongs to the BBC Scotland News website.
A Seam of Prosperity (last of the coal extracted)
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The final buckets of coal were extracted from the ground on Wednesday 6th February thus ending the first phase of the Heartlands main development. After coming on site in early 2004, the mining contractors have brought out some 1,603,000 tonnes of black gold. This amount far exceeded the expectations, in fact they extracted approx 200,000 tonnes more than they had expected and what is more impressive is that they completed the coaling just under 6 months ahead of schedule despite some poor weather conditions Whitburn has thrown at them over the last few years. Some minor areas of coal were abandoned, being either uneconomic to work or sterilised by utilities. The work has seen Minrec (the contractors) dig down as deep as 42 meters below ground level extracting coal from seams such as the Colinburn, Armadale Ball and Armadale Main; the two Armadale seams running the length of the entire site fromNorth to South and the Mill seam where the last coal was extracted in Area C16 at the south-western corner of the site. They have unearthered old workings which showed just how dangerous and difficult the conditions were in days long gone and they have uncovered various objects like old bottles, fossils and so on. Not exactly suitable for “Antiques Roadshow” or “Time Team” but interesting nevertheless.
So what is next? It is all about remediation now, getting the land back to a condition where it can be developed by the house builders or, further to the South thosebuilding the Donald Ross Memorial Golf courses. This photo taken from the corner of Dixon Terrace / Polkemmet Road looks south over the whole site. It may look like a desolated landscape at the moment but it should be remembered that an incredible amount of work has taken place over the last three or so years. Massive spoil heaps (bings) have been removed, new water treatment ponds created replacing the existing ones, streams diverted, wildlife carefully moved and new habitats formed and coal…the point of the exercise, extracted. This picture shows just how dramatically the landscape has changed in just over 2 years with the vast mound that was overburden mound 1A on the right now but a distant memory. Now that the coal has gone the contractors are busy filling in the holes using the overburden mounds, compacting the soils and bringing the land back to life. In six months times this particular shot will be taken again and will bear no resemblance to what is seen now.