Glastonbury organiser Michael Eavis has revealed that the festival may not be held at Worthy Farm in 2016 due to safety concerns.
Speaking in Dublin last week (via NME), Eavis stated that a gas pipe running beneath the iconic fields of the festival has been deemed dangerous, and that people dancing on said pipe could fracture it and pose a threat the the festival’s attendees. “We’ve got a gas main running through the site, a big gas pipe coming down from the North of England to Torquay,” Eavis said. “They [Mendip District Council and gas technicians] said this is dangerous and I said, ‘Well it’s been there for years and so have we’. So every year they make a fuss about this pipe.
“We’re supposed to stop people dancing on the pipe, which is a pretty impossible thing to do. They say that if they are all dancing on the pipe at the same time they could fracture it.”
Eavis conceded that moving the festival away from Worthy Farm would mean that Glastonbury 2016 “wouldn’t be quite the same,” but added that it may have to happen if the issue is not remedied and the council considers it unsafe.
The organiser also spoke of the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, and whether this could present security issues for 2016’s festival, revealing that he had already held meetings with police in order to determine whether or not there was a significant threat. “I don’t know really if we would be targets for that kind of thing,” he said. “I would hope not but then nobody deserves to be a target for that. We’re 120 miles from London and 120 miles from Birmingham, so we’re a long way from the big cities.
“We’ve already had a meeting with the police. We’ve gone all these years without any trouble at all. Hardly any violence, hardly any crime and it would be a terrible, terrible shame if something is about to change.”
Hopefully these problems do not become more significant and Glastonbury can continue to be held in Worthy Farm where it belongs.
