Take a last look at the moor...
By ANDREW GORDON: The decision of Cornwall Council to allow a giant wind farm to dominate an area of Bodmin Moor means that nowhere in this county is now safe from turbines.
Councillors have delivered a blank cheque to renewable energy companies up and down the land to move into Cornwall and erect turbines just about where they please.
If our so-called democratic representatives can vote to allow the 20 tallest turbines yet seen in Cornwall to sprout up at Davidstow, next to our two highest peaks of Brown Willy and Roughtor, then the question has to be asked – where next?
Those who believed a single authority was the best option for Cornwall might want to reconsider their position now.
Local Cornwall planning councillors – those who actually live in the north and east of the county – had tossed the wind farm application out when they met last month.
The council's own planning officers had recommended the bid be refused, and of course there was mass opposition by residents living in the area.
Yet the Strategic Planning Committee, made up of councillors from across Cornwall, and by default, some who live way down west, decided it was a cracking idea to have 20 turbines, 126 metres high, dominate the historic landscape of Bodmin Moor.
That's why a one-size fits all council was a bad idea.
When councillors from outside an area can outvote those who live and work in it, who can honestly say local democracy is working?
Bodmin Moor is a huge expanse of scenic wilderness, but for how much longer?
I wrote in this column last week that renewable energy companies had been eyeing the moor for years, because that's where the wind blows.
Now that Cornwall Council has opened the floodgates, these companies will be bombarding County Hall with turbine applications over the coming years and in allowing the Davidstow scheme to go ahead, how can councillors possibly argue that wind farms should not be erected anywhere in Cornwall?
They can't.
They have set a precedent and dug themselves a huge hole which will be impossible for them to get out of.
That's the problem with here today, gone tomorrow local politicians.
They can make a stupid and irreversible decision that will affect a landscape that has been with us for millennia, and walk away after a few years into the obscurity from whence they came.
● andrewgordon@c-dm.co.uk
4 Comments
by Peter West, Tintagel
Monday, November 16 2009, 8:31PM
“Thank you for your excellent article Andrew Gordon, however, the councillors have not dug themselves a hole as you have stated, they have dug US a hole. They think they are in the clear.
There is now a growing army of Davidstow Moor users who are not prepared to let councillors who have never even set foot on the moor dictate what it¿s future will be for us. The ¿New council¿ has only been with us for a few months and if this is what we can all look forward to then we can and must stop it now.
If we let these lunatics steal our democracy we are all just passengers on a runaway train. Make no mistake, when concrete goes down it never comes up¿..Never!”
by Araminta Greaves, Advent
Tuesday, October 27 2009, 10:05AM
“Jethro, I take your point about the landscape of the moor but as this development is to be on peat land I am afraid its effects will not be reversible. Peat is the best CO2 sink on the planet and by digging up vast quantities of it to put down the huge concrete rafts that will be needed to support these enormous turbines, more CO2 will be released than these turbines can ever hope to save through generating renewable energy. Also the manufacturing of concrete is one of the most environmentally disastrous processes in the construction industry.
Don't forget that Friends of the Earth have vehemently opposed this proposal, there is a place for wind generation but this is not it.
So many people have been blinded by the wind power industry's PR that it is now difficult to get people to look at the science behind the emotive issues.”
by Big Ger, Truro England
Tuesday, October 27 2009, 9:48AM
“Of course what the NIMBYs do not realise is that having these turbines on the moors will actually protect them from further development.
But seeing as it s "carbon Boot" and his ilk who want us all to go green, yet do not want us to do anything new in Cornwall it';s no surprise really.”
by Jethro George Gauld, St Austell
Monday, October 26 2009, 11:53PM
“Think rationally, Bodmin moor was completely different 10000 years ago, we were stil coming out of an ice age, Not long ago bodmin moor was covered in forest. it is only the action of man within the last few thousand years that has led to this landscape appearing as it does today. Using this argument is farcicle and is based upon a fairy tale idea that the earth has looked the sam throughout history. Bodmin moor has ben shaped by humans in one form or another since the stone age. And shaped by geological processes, often violent ones before that.
Anyway, the building of wind turbines is entirely reversible, when their working life is over they can either be replaced or removed, the concrete base can be smashed up and taken away and other than some disturbed ground there will be little evidence they were ever there. Unlike large power plants which leave huge scars in the landscape. Of course your not concerned with them though because they aren't in your back yard, their someone elses problem.”