Application – 55 kW wind turbine, South Bofindle Farm, Mount, Warleggan
STATUS: Approved with conditions
see: decision notice (28/01/13) – officer report (28/01/13) – other documents
>> BBC NEWS: Cornwall wind turbine approved after parish decision change – Warleggan Parish Council had voted against the proposals for South Bofindle Farm in December. It changed its decision after being contacted by Cornwall Council planners… BBC News, Cornwall, 05/02/2013
proposed for both Bofindle Farm and South Bofindle Farm
from fineenergy.wordpress.com
click to see larger image
By a majority of four to three, the Planning Sub-Committee at the parish meeting of Thursday 20th December 2012 had voted not to support application PA12/10968 for “Installation of a single small-scale 55 kW wind turbine on a 36 m Monopole tubular tower (up to 47 m tip height) with 3 blades and a rotor diameter of 19.2 m and associated equipment’ at South Bofindle, Mount, Bodmin, PL30 4DU.” Full details of the discussions and decisions made are given in the minutes of the meeting.
Click the link above to find out more about this application, and to review the documents held at Cornwall County Council; note that in the documents listing some of the documents appear unlabelled, but they can still be seen by clicking on the acrobat logo on the left of each row. Comments and letters submitted to Cornwall Council can also be found there, both in favour and against, and those interested can submit their own comments by letter or through their website.
If you wish to see recent observations about this application from readers of Warleggan News, and/or to contribute your own thoughts and ideas, please go down this page until you get to the top of the ‘comments’ section.
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Application – 5 kW wind turbine, Castle Dewey, Warleggan
STATUS: Approved with conditions – erected Nov 2012; up and running
– (decision notice not available online)
A parish meeting was held at the Jubilee Hall on 4th September, where, amongst other things, the planning application was discussed for a small wind turbine at Castle Dewey, PA12/05804. See minutes for this meeting.
Amongst the arguments made in favour were its relatively small height (‘a telegraph pole and a half’), the compatibility of its output (5kW) with the needs of the farm, its ability (according to some) to ‘fit in’ with the topography of the surrounding environment, its low noise levels, its green credentials as an environmentally friendly power source, its role in helping make the farm viable, its compatibility with a culture of centuries of change and progress in the area, and, according to one, the beauty of turbines.
as had been proposed for Castle Dewey and has now been installed there
from greenreview.blogspot.co.uk
click to see larger image
Arguments against included the inappropriateness of its location deep within an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and so close to historic sites (tumuli etc.), the insufficient consultation with neighbours, the proximity to some residences, the potential effects on health (both known and unknown), the spoiling of the landscape including when viewed from the road, and the fear of a precedent being set: that if this one is approved, more will surely follow.
The planning sub-committee considered the application, and voted five in favour of the application, and three against.
Background: The proposed turbine is an Evance R9000, 5kW, on a 15 metre tower. Like the turbine proposed for Bofindle (see below), it would be a three-blade turbine, but with a tower less than half the height, with blades less than half the size, and it would produce a tenth of the power output (see photos above).
Note that on the planning website, some of the documents listed appear unlabelled in the ‘associated documents’ window, but can still be viewed by clicking on the PDF logo on the left, including the top listed item, the planning application itself. It can be safely assumed, also, that the listing of it as a 5 watt turbine is also in error.
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Application – 50 kW wind turbine, Bofindle Farm, Mount, Warleggan
STATUS: PA12/05060 (Bofindle Farm) – Application refused, 15th Feb 2013
– (decision notice not available online)
A well-attended meeting was held on 7th August 2012, at which plans for the proposed turbine PA12/05060 at Bofindle Farm, near to Carne Wood, were discussed. Full minutes for this meeting are posted on Warleggan News. Below is an informal brief summary, produced earlier, which is NOT an official record:
- Statements were made, firstly on behalf of the applicant, and secondly in opposition to the proposal.
- A lively discussion followed on the various issues and factors raised.
- The following resolution was proposed, seconded and voted on by Warleggan parishioners through a show of hands – 36 voted in favour of the resolution, and 9 against:
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“This Parish Meeting strongly urges the Parish Planning Sub-Committee to recommend the rejection of the planning application for a wind turbine at Bofindle Farm, Mount. This Meeting would like the parish’s formal response to Cornwall Council – whatever that response is – to be accompanied by the following explanation:
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“The Parish Meeting of Warleggan views the application PA12/05060 as incompatible with the importance and protection afforded to an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in current national and local planning policies. As these are due shortly to be superseded, we believe the application could be resubmitted at that time and that, unlike the present application, a wildlife survey is undertaken together with adequate consultation with nearby residents – carried out and recorded according to the Council’s own guidelines.”
- After further discussions, the Planning Sub-Committee then gathered to consider the application PA12/05060, and voted two in favour of the application, three against, and two abstentions.
RESEARCH:
- Review the PA12/05060 wind turbine planning application; and/or find out about other plans in the area by going to the council’s planning search page. Comments to the council on this or any planning applications can be made online, or by letter.
- Why not watch a short video showing the E-3120 turbine in action – for example, there is one produced by an installer Solar Ventus. Or read the 4-page brochure about the turbine produced by the manufacturers, Endurance Wind Power.
- Check out Cornwall Council’s renewable energy webpage, with links to maps showing where various renewable energy projects are happening in the county, along with a series of well written guidance notes, specific to Cornwall, including one looking in detail at onshore wind.
- Or just google away…
Use the ‘comments’ window below to express your views. Please be careful in how you phrase things, especially if you want to disagree with someone else’s comment. The idea of this site is to bring people together …
Comments received by email:
- From Cathy Farnworth, Monday, 6 August 2012, 11:48: Say No Leaflet and letter to the council
- A poem from Roger Farnworth, 6 August 2012, 20:19 on the subject – The Wind Farm: Elegy for a Cornish Village
Well done Andrew. It must be said however, that it was a strange way in which to try to get some land for allottments! May your last sentence turn out to be true.
Ian, managed to track down his Lordship . We had a chat and agreed that his comments were neither accurate or fair – and were indeed irrelevant to his main concern which is to get hold of an acre of land to be turned into allotments.
Hopefully all is now sweetness and light.
I totally agree Andrew. The comments made by this ‘person’ are indeed poisonous and need a vigorous response, not just vetting. They are not man, or woman, enough to give their true name.
OK folks, given the recent flurry of posts, the settings have now been adjusted so that comments now need to be approved before they will appear. Sorry for the delays this will inevitably cause. Posts from anonymous visitors to the site will be accepted only if they are very clearly both relevant and appropriate. Hope this is acceptable to all.
I should add that I have been here 10 years and all the Cornish locals have been top. The incomers have introduced snobbery (not all of them)
We have the chance to develop a strong community and that may mean that some folk need to wake up and join in …..and some will have to get used to the idea that the locals are not servant types. That they have a voice that counts as much as anyone else’s at the very least.
I would;d like to see locals getting involved b4 this turns into Westminster types running things.
They are all clothes and cars.
I agree completely with you Chris. Whilst I thought it was okay for people to express views on this website anonymously if they felt freer to do so, it is completely wrong to abuse this power in this way. The aim of our discussions should be to understand each other more in the belief that all of us are sincere in our beliefs and are doing what we think is right.
Sadly, I’ve just had to ‘unapprove’ a comment on this forum for the first time.
I would suggest to the writer that any concerns he might have about malpractice either be discussed directly with the person concerned, or raised at a parish meeting, or if there is evidence of crime, fraud etc., the duty is to report it to the appropriate authorities. This website forum is not the place for making anonymous allegations, nor for making what may appear to some as a threat.
I would also like to suggest that discussion on the turbine page is limited to turbine-related issues.
A small correction to my comment below.
When I talked about ” death during the hungry months ” I meant to say ”dearth”. Wouldn’t like to give anyone the impression that we have to cull members of the family when we run out of cabbages.
Dear Andrew,
Your letter is a bit too long to fully grasp, but on the bird angle – there is a great deal of evidence of harm to birds and bats, even from small turbines. No one, even the RSPB, denies this. The trade off is often expressed as – well more birds will die from global warming which we have to try and stop, and the figures on bird and bat (which can be very high) mortality are couched in what is deemed ‘acceptable’ loss. People also argue that ‘more’ birds are killed in collisions with windows etc, so everything depends on perspective and more importantly, what line you wish to take. You just have to surf the internet to find out all these different data, but no one argues that no birds or bats are killed. One issue is that the wind industry itself actually prevents quite a lot of data entering the public domain and this makes understanding full losses difficult. Obviously, careful siting of the wind turbine helps to reduce mortality, sometimes signficantly, but as the Guardian pointed out – birds use the same wind currents to fly as those which turn the turbine blades. Raptors such as buzzards are at particular risk.
I just wonder if it is right to put up something that many find harms the landscape? The multiplier effect is a real worry. I argue consistently – no turbines in an AONB whatever their size.
Also, they do cause important carbon emissions during construction. This externality should be factored in. The physical turbine is not ‘green’ at all.
You are very right – we should all work urgently to save the ecology and the wider environment. We live in frightening times indeed. It is very hard to agree on how to do this though at the local level since people have not yet agreed on a collective vision for the parish – by collective, I mean a widely agreed one that children and young people have also participated in creating as well as everyone else. That is a shame because then these long discussions would not even need to happen – the kind of parish we want would be clear to all.
HARVESTING THE WIND.
The reasons for our application :-
First, the big picture. Personally my initial reaction to scientific opinion is generally sceptical. I did a science degree and know too well that academic pride, competition for grants and sponsorship , the interests of your employer all too often have a bearing on scientific research and its outcomes.
So when discussion about Climate Change became mainstream I wasn’t rushing to hop on the bandwagon.Very unfortunately though after much scrutiny of the interests involved it has become starkly obvious that manmade Climate Change is indeed a very evident and rather frightening fact.
Meteorology is unusual in that there isn’t much money to be made out of it so a great deal of the science is independent and with no axe to grind , this is in stark contrast to the Climate Change Denial lobby which is predominantly and lavishly funded by the oil companies , often through front organisations in an attempt to obscure its origin ( e.g. Nigel Lawson’s organisation which refuses to reveal its source of funds).
Well over 90% of independent climate scientists believe that the evidence for manmade climate change is incontrovertible . Never mind the fact that things got cooler or hotter in the 13th and 16th centuries, never mind the sunspot theories, influence of volcanoes etc etc etc. the fact is that in no time in human history has the earth warmed so much in so short a time while at the same time man has so despoiled the planet that the natural buffer systems of rain forest, prairie and tundra just can’t cope anymore .
So what on earth do we do? Most of us are powerless to do anything on a large scale but if we each individually do all that we can to offset and mitigate climate change then at least that sends out ripples into the wider world and will help the momentum for change ( And frankly the only kind of sustainable growth that is going to get us out of our economic and ecological hole is green growth , sustaining and enhancing the viability and productivity of the natural world without completely ******* it up) .
So into this global context goes our fairly pitiful but symbolic application for a small – yes, very small – wind turbine.
I often hear the accusation that wind turbines aren’t efficient. Well , we can put up a mast no bigger than a lampost with a 2.3m radius blade on the top of it and then generate the equivalent of our entire annual usage by simply harvesting the wind.To me that is pretty darned efficient !
Ah, state the naysayers, the wind doesn’t blow all the time. Well it bloody nearly does up here! Britain is the windiest place in Europe by a very considerable factor. I view the turbine in a similar way to our vegetable garden – for a large part of the year we are self sufficent, sometimes we have gluts which we exchange with neighbours as credit to cover the death during the hungry months. Does the fact that our garden doesn’t supply us 365 days a year mean that we should forget it and concrete the thing over? What do you think ?!
What about visual impact ? Well I’m pretty sensitive to these things having lived in wild places pretty much all my life.For me, in this landscape with a turbine of this size I see no negative impact whatsoever – frankly for us it’s a plus not a minus.It is all to do with scale and location – anybody wanting to build a ten storey house in Warleggan would be a certifiable idiot but a modest building tucked away discreetly, well frankly that’s another thing entirely.We know that our two immediate and blameless neighbours are not keen and fear the worse, just as we might well do if we were to swap places, it is absolutely natural to fear the unknown. I do think though that if they were to visit a site with one of these Evance turbines on it they would discover their fears to be totally unfounded.
”It will damage wildlife especially birds”. If we thought that there was the slightest bit of truth in this then we just would not consider the idea for one minute. There is absolutely no such evidence against small turbines and indeed the RSPB , of which we are members, are strongly in favour .
”It will be noisy”. If you go down to a boatyard you will hear the slapping of halyards against metal masts whenever there is a bit of a breeze. Personally I like that noise it evokes the open sea and wild places. Our turbine will make a fraction of that sound, it will be regular, soft and unintrusive – like the susseration of a breeze stirring the leaves and totally unlike any industrial metallic din ( or the ever present and wholly grim sound of a strimmer on a Sunday afternoon).At 50 yards it is vertually inaudible , at 100 yards it is beyond faint.
This is all a bit of a battle and one that we will probably lose but I would like here to make an offer to all those who have lodged an objection.
You may be aware that there are generous grants available to replace fossil fuel burning heating systems with sustainable, non polluting equivalents. Indeed the government will pay you annually for the equivalent of the polluting Btus that haven’t gone up your chimney.
If all those who object to the turbine will undertake to trade in their oil fired central heating systems in exchange for a log or wood pellet burning alternative then we will happily and immediately withdraw our application.
The future has to be about clean skies and steady weather , or there will be no future at all and people of my generation will be recognised as the most feckless and self indulgent generation in human history.