Tuesday night - Tictac Last night I went over to Mordon to the Tictac meeting. Tictac are the group opposing Eons the Isles windfarm. I am not a member of the group, but they ask me to attend as an affected local councillor, so I go along as an observer. The Isles windfarm is going to be huge. There will be a cluster of very tall turbines in the Carrsides farm area, just to the south-east of the Rushyford roundabout. And there will be a larger cluster to the north-east of Preston-le-Skerne. Some of these turbines will be huge -- five times the height of Churchill Tower -- and they will be very visible from all over the area, especially from Woodham and School Aycliffe, and (outside our parish) from Chilton and Thickley. I heard at the meeting that Durham currently has the highest concentration of turbines-per-hectare of any county in England; The Isles windfarm will add another 20-or-so. You will remember that Eon had originally proposed a windarm of just over 50mw, which meant that the planning application would go to the Secretary of State. Then they withdrew that plan, reduced the size below the 50mw level, and said that they were going to submit it instead to Durham County Council. Then we heard nothing for a long, long while. Anyway, yesterday I was informed that Eon intend to submit a revised plan to DCC in mid-April. No one in the group had seen the revised plan, so it may be different to the one we have seen. Most of the group are from Mordon and Bradbury, people who will have these huge things virtually in their back garden, but it includes people who are alarmed about the environmental damage, the danger of flooding, the disruption of flooding and the cumulative impact of all these windfarms in the area, and they all expressed their worries. Some of them have become experts in matters like shadow flicker and amplitude modulation noise and the like, and they can all quote you County Council planning policy for every square inch of the area involved! One of their worries last night was that - despite everything - there are still people who do not even know that a windfarm is coming, never mind appreciate just how visually and environmentally intrusive the turbines are going to be. So they divided their time last night between organising their technical response to the planning application, and discussing how to raise awareness. As a town and county councillor, I have to be conscious of the fact that some of my residents support windfarms, as much as some of them oppose them. However, I think that *everybody* needs to know about what will be in effect a huge industrial development on the farmland to the east of our town, and I will keep you in touch with developments as they occur.
Posted on: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 09:31:01 +0000
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