Lincolnshire County Council in Windfarm Fight Back
I have to admit I have a personal interest in this issue. I wasn’t too worried about it until a planning application to build 6 monstrous turbines each larger than the London Eye came to my backyard. My sources tell me some wind farm companies are saturating localities with proposals with a view to getting one out of every 5 through.
There is certainly a whopping pay off for the landowner and no visual pollution for the developer but a huge visual downside for residents as their rural landscapes are industrialised. The old more modest sized and dispersed approach to turbines was sustainable but the scale of unfettered zeal with which some mass applications are being submitted has led my County Council to say “enough is enough” and to propose as this article sets out a general presumption against development of new windfarms.
To be fair we already have 75 in the County and several hundred more are already in the planning pipeline. From now on they will need to be at least 6 miles from any settlement of more than10 houses. It seems to me what is at issue here is not so much the benefit or not of wind power, but the lack of a national energy framework which regulates where and when they can be built. This leaves their development to be driven more by the ability of their proposers to overcome local communities than a rational approach to their location. Before you disagree with this you might interestingly reflect on how you would feel if the location of nuclear power generation facilities was based on the same loose process.