Turbine petition is gathering support
Jan 24 2009 By Dave Black, The Journal
MORE than 100 people have signed a petition opposing plans to build four giant wind turbines in countryside near a Northumberland market town.
The petition was gathered during a packed public meeting held to drum up support for a protest campaign against green power company Novera Energy’s bid to develop the wind farm at Todd Hill, about six kilometres north-west of Morpeth. The meeting – held in the town’s Queen’s Head Hotel on Thursday night – was organised by local pressure group Put People First (PPF), which claims the 101 metre-high turbines will be seen from the coastline to the Simonside Hills in the west.
The machines will be about five times the height of Morpeth’s historic Clock Tower and Gateshead’s Angel of the North, both of which are 20 metres high.
More than 100 people attended Thursday night’s meeting to learn more about the scheme, which is now the subject of a formal planning application to Castle Morpeth Council. Yesterday PPF chairman Tim Weightman, a businessman who lives with his wife and three daughters at Abshields near Todd Hill, said: "We are delighted with the number of people who took the time to attend and find out more about how Novera’s proposals will affect them and their area.
"The support shown reflects the strength of feeling residents have towards the wind turbines. we are hopeful they will make their feelings known by writing to the council with their objections.’’
Campaigner Keith Pugh, who lives at Stanton, just over a mile away from the proposed site, said: "The largest man-made structures in this countryside are farm buildings, country houses and the occasional church tower, all tiny in comparison to the turbines, which will be wholly alien and vast in comparison. I believe this is all wrong.
"The fightback must start here.’’
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