WORK is due to start on filling in the controversial Ash Moor pit in the next four weeks, but final details about the restoration are yet to be decided.
Local residents want the pit at Petrockstowe, built at the height of the foot and mouth crisis but never used, to be restored as a wildlife conservation area. But DEFRA says the most likely course of action is to return it to agricultural land which it will then sell on the open market.
DEFRA officials are due to meet delegates from Devon Council Council in the next few days to discuss details of the work which will begin at the end of August, weather permitting.
Ash Moor was built at a cost of £5.6-million to take 400,000 foot and mouth carcasses and has cost £20,000 a week to maintain.
The European Commission declared in May that DEFRA broke environmental law by failing to conduct an environmental impact assessment before constructing the site.
Members of the action group STAMP (Stop the Ash Moor Pit), who held vigils outside the pit in 2001, said they felt vindicated after their complaint against DEFRA?s handling of the crisis was upheld.
Group member Jo Skinner said this week local residents would not be happy until Ash Moor was out of DEFRA?s hands.
?This pit should never have been built in the first place, but having done it and caused great upset in the area, DEFRA should make some sort of recompense and give it back to the community,? he said.
?We would like to see it as a nature conservation area under the control of someone like the Devon Wildlife Trust so the parish can get something out of it.
?We find it hard to believe anything DEFRA says when it assures us Ash Moor will never be used as part of a contingency plan during a national crisis again.?
Spokesman for the Government department Walim Wong said because the site was poor grade land, it would probably not make the best wildlife area.
He said: ?There is clay underneath the soil and and there are no rivers or ponds.
?The best restoration is probably as agricultural land and that is the view of Devon County Council.
?We bought the land originally and we are now under an obligation to get the best price for it for the taxpayers ? I am sure local residents would not appreciate it if we gave it away to any landowner.?