Maldon & Burnham Standard, letters page.
Middlewick windfarm has a lot of local support
Dear Editor,
Sue Hilton of 'Address supplied' (MBS 30th March) criticised members of local Colchester & North East Essex Friends of the Earth group for supporting the Middlewick windfarm proposal at the recent public inquiry.
We had spent a long time looking at the site and the surrounding area, as well as the reports from statutory consultees after their years of necessary research, before we unanimously agreed to support it.
Your picture outside the Maldon council offices (MBS 23rd March) showed some of us with some local people holding placards pointing out that RSPB, Natural England and the Essex Chambers of Commerce also support this windfarm.
But Ms Hilton states "The people of the Dengie have emphatically objected to them. Residents' views should take precedence." Two of our members went to Southminster and spent a few days asking residents their views at the doorstep. The majority were in support. RidgeWind submitted nearly 300 letters of support from Southminster residents to the Planning Inspectorate.
Ms Hilton also mentions the Bradwell windfarm proposal which we and Colchester council supported. It went through two public inquiries because of years of opposition from anti-windfarm group BATTLE and Maldon council. Two independent Inspectors approved it and the High Court threw out the recent High Court challenge.
Mersea Island is the largest community close to that windfarm and our view of them across the Blackwater would include the industrial hulk of the closed nuclear power station while being decommissioned and about 20 pylons.
New nuclear plants at Bradwell would need massive cooling towers 200 metres high by 100 metres wide. These would be seen from far and wide across the Dengie and beyond - dwarfing the Bradwell windfarm. As we said at the Middlewick windfarm inquiry this makes a nonsense of Maldon council objecting to the windfarm on visual grounds while supporting new nuclear plants!
Yours sincerely,
Paula Whitney (Mrs), Co-ordinator,
Colchester & North East Essex Friends of the Earth,
4 Shears Crescent, West Mersea, Essex.
01206/383123