Pot calling the kettle...

29 October 2004

With a coal-fired power plant in the backyard, one would think that a wind farm would be a welcome turn of fortune for the town of Selby. But an 11-person committee is speaking out against the wind farm for primarily visual concerns. Why, community members will be upset when it blocks their view of the coal plant?

The 12 turbines would sit right along side the local coal-fired power plant, but a small vocal group is complaining that the turbines will ruin the landscape.

The proposed wind farm at Rusholme will power 14,500 homes with clean renewable energy that does not pollute the air or contribute to climate change. In addition to being good for the local environment, the wind farm could also be good for the local economy. A recent report, Offshore wind, onshore jobs, shows that the growing wind power industry could bring up to 76,000 new jobs to the UK with up to 38,000 of them in the North East region.

The silent majority of the area actually support the construction of the wind farm and our local activists are helping to make sure their voices are heard. Read the update from local activist Richard Claxton:

The flatlands to the south of York are home to the ancient market town of Selby. Dominating the landscape, however, is the huge coal-fired power station at Drax, just a few miles away. Earlier this year, the proposal for a 12-turbine wind farm at Rusholme - less than two miles from Drax - led to the formation of an extremely vociferous anti-wind farm action group, CART (Communities Against Rusholme Turbines).

CART may be a lousy acronym but it belies the fact that the group's members have managed to lodge 500 individual objections with Selby District Council. Until very recently, the group had also successfully managed to monopolise the local media coverage of the plan. Not any more. On October 2, Greenpeace volunteers from North and East Yorkshire began descending on Selby town centre armed with letters supporting the proposal. At the time of writing, three 2-hour visits by a team of five activists have resulted in the collection of well over 600 signed letters to the council.

The campaigning so far has been a very positive and encouraging experience. We estimate that well over 95% of those who talked to us were strongly in favour of the specific plan at Rusholme and wind farms in general. The local weekly paper is running with the story and the Yorkshire Evening Press will give us coverage so long as we give them a good picture - so the plan for the next visit to Selby is to illustrate the nukes/renewables choice with radiation suits and wind-turbine headgear.

Many members of the public were quick to identify this choice - the one we have to make to cut our carbon dioxide emissions. In three days of communications work, only one person expressed a preference for nuclear power. Furthermore, the intense hostility towards coal-fired power stations was palpable.

Living in the shadow of Drax is a huge concern for many people and stories of increasing asthma rates abound. There were also stories about the visible evidence of atmospheric pollution, such as the powder which settles on newly-washed cars. Local evidence of climate change was cited by a number of people. Four years ago, 150 homes in the Selby area were flooded. The village of Monk Fryston has flooded five times in three years.

We have met our first target - letters of support now outweigh the NIMBY objections. Our next step is to demonstrate to councillors and planners alike that there's a huge, silent majority strongly in favour of wind power in the district.

We should be aiming for thousands of letters of support before next January's planning meeting. We shall also need to prepare briefings for local councillors to debunk the many myths surrounding wind farms. Councillors need to be able to successfully challenge the advice of their officers if they believe that advice to be faulty. For mutual help, advice and support, we shall also try to make contact with the farming family who have made the application to have the turbines on their land. After a lot of aggressive and vitriolic comment in the letters pages of the local press, they need to know they are not alone.

Richard Claxton
Greenpeace Area Networker
Hull and East Yorkshire

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