Pontefract Windfarm Action Group

PONTEFRACT & CASTLEFORD EXPRESS Thursday 3rd April 2008

Has world gone mad?

Are we going to be totally surrounded by wind farms in Pontefract?

Plans are being drawn up for Darrington, Ferrybridge/Ferry Fryston and Knottingley/Whitley Bridge, where next?

Any site that can comply with existing guidelines. In the valley between Carleton and East Hardwick, on the hill next to Marlpit Lane, in the middle of the racecourse, near the water tower on Ackworth Road, between the crematorium and Featherstone.

Has the world gone mad?

If wind power is the answer for the planet there are plenty of places not so close to homes, some of the existing proposals are within 500metres of houses and over 125metres tall.

Already people around the country, who live farther away from the turbines than 500m, are complaining about loss of sleep, problems with noise and visual disturbances, to put them even closer to houses is ludicrous.

Twice the height!

"I never realised they were going to be this big!"

PONTEFRACT & CASTLEFORD EXPRESS Thursday 20th March 2008 Pont&Cas GUARDIAN 21st March 2008

Issue new guidelines

When a contractor applies to build a wind farm the only criteria that council planning departments apply are existing government guidelines and planning law.

No consideration of a financial feasibility is used, but it is our money in the form of large subsidies and the renewable price levy on our electricity bills that will pay for it.

Who polices this money to see that it is used efficiently and not squandered among a group of band-wagon jumping developers intent on making large profits, with little consideration for people who will have to live underneath these large industrial machines? No one!

We don't begrudge a company making an honest buck, in fact the economy depends on it as well as our jobs but there has to be a balance that protects the public.

The Government needs to step in now and issue new guidelines designed to protect the people it serves, US. Existing guidelines from 1997 were put in when turbines were only small and need to take into account the massive size of the new generation of taller turbines now being deployed.