Shock at power plant plans for Cary
Printed on Friday, February 06, 2009 in the Shepton Mallet Journal
OBJECTORS have vowed to fight plans for a power plant in Castle Cary which they describe as an “oversized monster”.
Bronzeoak Thermal is proposing to build a biomass energy plant at Dimmer capable of generating electricity for thousands of local homes.
Although a formal application has not yet been submitted, initial planning documents indicate the chimney alone will be 60 metres high – taller than Wells Cathedral and almost twice the height of nearby Crown Pet Foods factory.
Castle Cary Town Council, Carymoor, Ansford, and Lydford parish councils are united in protest, claiming the plant is in the wrong place for its size and lorry deliveries would cause havoc on country roads.
John Newton of Carymoor Parish Council said: “This is shocking. I’m all in favour of appropriately sized and sited renewable energy projects, but this oversized monster would be in completely the wrong place. People local to Castle Cary have had enough of inappropriate industrial developments. We will fight this proposal all the way.”
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Bronzeoak operated an animal-carcass incinerator at Dimmer but it was shut down in 2006 after local residents complained about smells.
Documents drawn up by the company in November, which the Western Gazette has seen, reveal that it plans to fuel the energy plant with a combination of green and waste wood, energy crops, secondary recovered fuel and dried sewage sludge.
They show that the plant would produce 25MW of electricity, enough to meet the daily needs of all the households in a town the size of Yeovil. It would need 250,000 tonnes of fuel a year. Objectors fear the deliveries of the material will have a severe impact on local roads.
The company says it would use energy crops likely to create work for local farmers on a long-term basis, and whatever the size of the plant, 27 staff would be directly employed with roughly the same amount employed for delivering fuel to the site.
But prospects of employment have not won over county and district councillor Henry Hobhouse.
He said: “The size is ludicrous for the landscape. It might be right for a bigger town but not next to Castle Cary.”
Town councillor for Castle Cary Jim Hood said the plant would not be properly equipped to handle chemicals called dioxins which could be emitted from the waste.
Cllr Newton said the Castle Cary area was already self-sufficient, with 4MW of renewable power generated from landfill gas at Dimmer, plus other small renewable energy plants in the making locally.
“This proposal certainly isn’t ‘green’. All it would do is lead to a massive increase in HGV traffic thundering through local communities, increased carbon emissions and transmission losses in feeding power to where it would actually be used,” he said.
Chairman of Castle Cary Town Council Nick Weeks said: “We feel that with all the lessons we have learned with Crown Pet Foods, there needs to be a lot more liaison with the local communities before anything is carried out.”
Chairman of Ansford Parish Council Janette Cronie said the main concern was the impact of traffic and the fact Ansford would be downwind of any potential odorous emissions.
A spokesman for Bronze- oak confirmed the company, which has owned the site for ten years, has plans to develop it. But he stressed that it was constantly reviewing what size it could be and other elements before final decisions are made.
“We are in very early stages in considering our options for the site, and in terms of size we are not in a position to say for definite. But we are keen to have the community involved in the project, in order to minimise the impact on the local community. We are one of the leading developers of renewable projects and our interest in the UK is for renewable power.”
A spokeswoman for the district council said it had not received a planning application for a bio energy plant.
“However, should an application of this type come in, as with any planning applications we would ensure the community is able to comment and all planning applications are considered on their own merits,” she said.
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