Misleading claims (From Craven Herald)

Misleading claims

9:18am Saturday 30th August 2008

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Sir - As suggested in Liz and Terry Goddison's letter, Clever Timing (Herald, August 22), I visited focl.org.uk. I also studied Energie-Kontor's (EK) planning application for the Brightenber Hill wind farm.

Friends of Craven Landscape (FOCL) quote a number of irrelevant and misleading "facts" about performance of wind turbines. The viability of the wind farm project requires a commercial decision by EK based on data from their wind measurements on site. The performance of the turbines should not enter into the district council's consideration of this planning application.

FOCL make the absurd claim that jobs in tourism will be affected. Brightenber Hill is not a "tourist destination". Six million visitors come to Craven to visit the market towns and the National Park, not Brightenber Hill. FOCL's claim that EK have ignored bats is also inaccurate. EK have carried out an ecological assessment of the site covering not only bats, but also newts, badgers and birds and are proposing habitat enhancement in support of these species as part of the plan.

In 2035 removal of the turbines will return the area to its unremarkable original state with minor ecological enhancement.

Five years ago I formed Malhamdale Renewable Energy Group to promote renewable energy in Malhamdale, particularly community projects. I believe that projects like the Settle Hydro scheme, reported in the Herald on August 15, if developed to achieve Craven's target of 18MW installed renewable energy capacity by 2010, would bring more long-term benefit to the people of Craven than EK's wind farm.

However, it would take at least 250 similar sized projects to equal the output of Brightenber Hill, and that only reaches two thirds of the target. That clearly is not going to happen.

Over the next 25 years Britain will need every unit of sustainable energy we can generate just to keep the lights on. A purely objective view is that the Brightenber Hill wind farm should be given the go ahead. However, as with all industrial developments, the views of those whose residences are directly affected by the turbines must be taken into account. Some may actually like wind turbines!

Sandy Tod, Malhamdale Renewable Energy Group, Friars Garth, Malham

Physical assault

Sir - A German company proposes, with a huge subsidy from the British Government, to erect wind turbines in Craven which are planned to be 100 metres (328 feet) in height, as high again as Skipton and Glusburn are above sea level; four times the height of Skipton Parish Church.

They would physically assault part of our landscape on a massive scale and be visible from many miles around, including much of the south-western flank of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. The detriment is disproportionate to the benefit. If in Craven we have to produce our quota of renewable energy, then we should use the natural resource which here we possess in abundance: water.

Majority stretches of the rivers Aire, Wharfe and Ribble flow through Craven. It is from these that our contribution should be drawn, not by ruining a large section of our increasingly precious countryside, a fortiori with a system which, in terms of producing power when it is required, is the most fickle.

In their own country, the Germans are at least as environmentally sensitive as any other European nation. For example, earlier this decade construction of the high-speed railway line from Cologne to Frankfurt was delayed for almost two years while environmentalists set out their requirements - which their local and national government observed. The planning authority would do a lasting disservice to us all if it were to allow this scheme to proceed.

Robert H Foster, Winterburn Grange, Winterburn

Orange monster

Sir - If you look towards the sky near Brightenber Hill, Bank Newton, and see a big orange thing, it's not the sun, it's an orange blimp being flown at the height and location of the planned turbines. Except of course there will be five of them spread out across the landscape and each one will have rotating blades bigger than the wing span of a jumbo jet. The blimp won't be there all the time. Ironically it can't be flown if the wind is too strong.

I have just driven past the wind turbines at Penny Pot Lane, near Harrogate, and was saddened to see so many houses and a farm for sale. This must be a direct consequence of those wind turbines and the absolute damage they do to an area. I wonder if the Brightenber Hill developer is still offering coach trips to that site to see what little impact they have. Maybe he'll imitate Homer Simpson - Doh!

Because of the turbines, the value of those properties will have fallen by at least 20 per cent. There has been a recent legal ruling on the loss of property value against a couple in the Lake District. The judge, Michael Buckley, upheld the purchasers' claim that their house had been de-valued as a result of the noise pollution, light flicker and damage to visual amenity and he ordered the vendors to pay 20 per cent compensation.

A study of eight properties in Carmarthenshire estimated that the total loss in value if the turbines were built nearby would be £1.5 million or typically 20 to 25 per cent. All this for these monstrosities that blight the countryside and produce just a trickle of electricity.

If this planning application is approved there will be a lot of people, including the planning committee, imitating Homer - Doh! Keep a look out for the orange monsters.

Stephanie Emmett, Ivy End, Bank Newton, Gargrave

Rural blight

Sir - Regarding the wind turbines at Bank Newton, Craven District Council have before them a planning application which, at a stroke, could do more visual damage to the area than any other single application I have witnessed in over 30 years of working in local architectural practice. There have, of course, been other developments which, in landscape terms, one would have preferred not to happen.

Generally speaking, though, the planning process has struck a balance between environmental cost and social benefit and has been able to moderate any detrimental impact by requiring schemes of planting and landscaping. Given the contours of the Ribble Valley and Craven, that has been remarkably effective in protecting the special quality of the landscape.

In the case of wind turbines however, it is simply not possible to do that; by definition they must project above everything around them. Those proposed for Bank Newton are to be 100 metres high. That means they will be visible for miles around, notwithstanding the fact that the site is in an area adjacent to a national park on one side and an area of outstanding natural beauty on the other.

If the project were allowed to happen it would make a nonsense of all the subtleties of control that have been applied by the local planning authorities over the years to their rural developments and particularly to the listed buildings and conservation areas.

The enormous size of this proposal is unprecedented in the area. It will turn a rural landscape into an industrial site. The charm of this landscape is its essentially human scale; the nature of the turbine proposal is megalomanic. It will dwarf its surroundings and create a scenic blight that will be inescapable for miles around. The visual arrogance of it is astonishing.

The initiative is not local; it is by a German developer taking advantage of central government grants. It is not concerned, therefore, with damage to the amenity of local residents nor to the inevitable damage which will be caused to tourism when visitors discover that, rather than being in a rural landscape, they will be in the shadow of an engineering behemoth.

Without the political pressures behind the project it is inconceivable that anyone would contemplate submitting such a grossly insensitive scheme in such an inappropriate location to a planning authority whose remit is to achieve the exact opposite. Both the commercial justification and the ecological case for isolated groups of turbines such as these is unproven. This application therefore, like other similar ones, is driven by temporary political dogma which will quickly be replaced when saner, more practical counsels prevail. By then, of course, the landscape will already have been mutilated.

Such short term expediency must not be allowed as a justification for imposing an abuse of such a scale and of so alien a nature as will scar the landscape for the foreseeable future.

Dr DM Peacock, Sunderland Peacock & Associates, Architects & Designers, Haslemere, Pimlico Road, Clitheroe

Blind faith

Sir - What is concerning about Bob Holland's castigation of UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom's assertion that the European Union's target for renewable energy is based on "junk science and misinformation" (Letters, August 15) is the blind faith he and the Labour Party place on "collective solutions" for our environment coming from the European Union.

For an example of the gross ineptitude of European Union environmental mismanagement, one only needs to consider the pitiful ecological disaster they have caused in our once rich British fishing grounds.

AJA Smith, Colne Road, Glusburn

Wrong title

Sir - Once again the good people of Glusburn and Cross Hills have had a visit from the roadworks fairy. The literature pushed through my door informs me that our council is blessing us with what they term road patching'.

I have to confess that I for one would have been happier with repairing' or perhaps resurfacing' as patching implies a temporary, mend and make do-type measure. Does this mean that sometime in the near future we will once again be paid a call from the men in high viz, come to finish the job?

The permanence or otherwise of the road repairs, however, is not my reason for penning this note. The road repairs are, quite sensibly, being carried out at night and this has meant that between the hours of 7pm and 5am Glusburn and Cross Hills are sealed off from the outside world, like a 17th century plague town. In order to maintain the cordon and to allow residents access, workmen have been stationed at road blocks on all routes into the village.

Now to the point of this letter. Who decided that these men are to be called Traffic Ambassadors'? Why these gentlemen require any sort of title at all is beyond me, but to refer to them as ambassadors is bigging them up just a bit too much. While I've never worked for the diplomatic service I think I am pretty safe in assuming that the role of ambassador does not include traffic management.

Does Her Majesty's ambassador to Nigeria nip out on his lunch break and direct traffic and is our man in Panama currently troubling himself with bollards? I suspect not.

Gary Speak, The Old Cornmill, Glusburn

Hard to find

Sir - I try to visit Skipton two or three times a year as it has so much to offer, especially on market days.

I always use the bus, but I am not impressed with the availability of bus information. On a recent visit I went to the obvious two places to find timetables and leaflets.

The Tourist Information Centre is not easy to find even though I tried to follow the signs.

There was only one leaflet on show so I had to ask for a specific timetable which was retrieved from the back. Worse was to come in the library, which had none on display and again you had to ask for it.

This does not encourage bus users like me who like to travel here, there and everywhere, or the car user to be more environmentally friendly. All libraries in Leeds have local timetables on display.

Paul Kirby, The Chase, Wetherby

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