Action group’s anger at windfarm firm’s tactics
Last updated 13:10, Tuesday, 22 July 2008
An action group has accused developers of ‘underhand’ practices in gathering support for a windfarm.
Bolsterstone plc, the company behind the Newlands Windfarm on the edge of Cumwhinton, put up a stand in English Street, Carlisle, yesterday and today where they have offered passers-by the chance to sign a letter in support of the development.
However, Alison Stamper, chairwoman of the Newlands Windfarm Action Group, said she felt such activity was unfair.
She said: “Stopping random people who have no idea about the development and who haven’t put time into looking at the site is a very underhand way of doing things.
“I have done it myself – when you are stopped on the street you will sign anything.
“They have got a matter of minutes to say ‘do I want to sign this or not’, you are just pressured into signing something you have not even thought about.
“I was most annoyed and disgusted with their approach.”
Formal plans for the site were recently submitted to Carlisle City Council. The project’s director Mike Corker said: “I don’t see why they are not happy with this.
“The people who are there have all the environmental information with them including copies of all the data that went to the planning office, and photomontages.
“They can show people the nature of the development and people who attend can go into as much detail as they require.”
The letter which people were being asked to sign was addressed to the planning officer dealing with the proposal, and asked people to state they were expressing ‘strong support’ for the wind farm.
Mrs Stamper added that her group had been distributing information on the plans, and were asking people to make an informed decision.
Under the plan, three 115-metre-tall turbines would be built near to the Golden Fleece motorway junction.
Last month, Penrith and Border MP David MacLean claimed that wind farms were ‘worthless’.
On Monday, permission was granted for the biggest windfarm in Europe to be built between Carlisle and Glasgow.
Abington, next to the A74(M), will become home to a 152-turbine farm, with the capacity to power 320,000 homes.
The scheme, costing £600million, will eclipse the current largest wind farm, in Guadalajara in Spain.
The council have eight weeks to make a decision on the site after publishing details of the application.
Details of the opposition group’s campaign are available at www.againstnewlandswindfarm.co.uk.
- For more details of the proposal, visit www.newlandswindfarm.co.uk
P.Dove speaks of subsidies yet fails to acknowledge that fossil fuels also receive subsidies, according to the New Foundation Economics Report "Up in Smoke" ( 2004) Industrialised countries ( OECD) provided a subsidy of 73 billion dollars a year to their fossil fuel industries and £40 million of tax payers money a year goes towards fossil fuels here, mostly into discovery and extraction of oil and gas, and lets not forget the tax payer will have to foot the bill for the decommissioning the UK's aging and soon to be shut nuclear plants.
Much is made of wind powers variability yet coal fired stations even when running at full output are about one third efficient as much of the energy is wasted in heat, throw in Carbon Capture and Storage CCS and the efficiency figure drops again and CCS, even if it worked could be decades away - to little too late ! Wind power is developing at a great pace globally, the US are looking at providing 20% of their energy needs by 2030 by wind power alone, clearly the potential is there, we could be a world class leader in this truly sustainable and proven technology, if only we had the vision and belief of other countries.
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Its a great shame that people such as P. Dove have such an ignorant view on the subject of alternative energy. Politics should not even come into the equation! Global warming is one of the biggest challenges the human race is faced with in the 21st Century. Do we care? Seemingly not. Did the residents of Cumwhinton object when the M6 was built?
Posted by J Guerrero on 7 August 2008 kl. 16:42