About 40 people attended a hastily-convened public meeting following the submission of a planning application for a £32m tourist development at Hamsterley Forest.
Hamsterley Forest Action Group, which opposes the plans, raised concerns about crucial information missing from the application, including how sewage effluent will be treated and discharged, and the impact of two boreholes on the aquifer that supplies a number of homes in the area, as well as providing wetland habitats for rare birds and other wildlife.
The application includes 70 holiday lodges with hot tubs, an upgrade to the existing visitor centre and car park, a Go Ape tree-top adventure park and a bunkhouse with camping facilities.
Group member Andy Richardson said other issues not fully addressed in the application include the impact of increased traffic on the already unsuitable road network.
He said the single track Redford Lane entrance into the forest is already suffering from subsidence and will struggle to cope with construction traffic as well as the increase in visitors once completed.
He added: “This last year, in five different spots, they (Durham County Council) have had to do remedial work at a cost of £12,500.
“I would describe their transport assessment as superficial and inaccurate. They said there were three buses into Hamsterley village. There aren’t. The nearest bus service is 5.1 miles away at Wolsingham.”
He argued the increase in traffic would impact CO2 emissions in the forest and surrounding villages, and complained there was no safe infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists to visit the area.
Mr Richardson added that many people living in the forest and at South Bedburn were worried about what the projected 60,000 litres a day of water extracted from two boreholes would have on the aquifer that also provides them with water.
There is also concern about the impact on an adjacent conservation field.
He said: “That field is full of different types of grass and there’s a wet area where birds such as lapwing and curlew like to feed – there has been no evaluation done as to whether the abstraction of 60,000 litres a day will impact on that field and the whole area.”
Those opposed to the scheme say there is insufficient information about how sewage from the site and waste water from the hot tubs will be treated and what exactly will be in the water being discharged into the Bedburn and Euben becks.
Mr Richardson said: “They might take the solid particulates out of the sewage, but it is what is still in the water – the nitrates, the phosphorous, the forever chemicals that is a concern.
“There are salmon, trout, otters and all the birds that feed on the different fish and there is no [information on] volumes that are going to get discharged and no breakdown of what is going to be left in the water.”
Mr Richardson said the campaign group had grown to more than 1,000 members and its online fundraising initiative is ongoing to help pay for advice from experts in planning, ecology and transport.
