RESIDENTS in the parishes of Orton and Tebay are using the very latest technology to implement their democratic right to protest against a proposed windfarm.

Members of a committee formed within "Friends of Eden, Lakeland and Lunesdale Scenery" (Fells), have launched their own website opposing the development by West Coast Energy Limited in conjunction with Lowther Estate Trust to put up approximately 40, 100-metre-high turbines on land between Bretherdale and Borrowdale.

The Whinash Wind Farm scheme will rank as the largest single industrial scheme ever to have been undertaken in this country in terms of land use. In its entirety it would create the largest land turbine development in Europe, extending over five miles in length.

Scattered over unspoilt Cumbrian fell landscape, it would be visible for many miles and be bordered by the Dales and Lake District National Parks and Sites of Special Scientific Interest. No scheme of this size has been constructed so close to significant areas of habitation, with over 800 residents living within sight of the scheme. And those opposed to the scheme point out the development would create virtually no employment, and put many jobs associated with tourism at risk.

Through http://www.nowhinashwindfarm.co.uk, the committee sets out its position on the development and, in a statement, says: "We oppose the scheme because it would create an ugly scar on fine countryside between two national parks, where the quality of the landscape is cherished and protected. The turbines, each approaching the height of Blackpool Tower, would be a visual intrusion grossly out of scale. They would create no benefit locally, their contribution to the national demand for energy would be insignificant and their cost to the UK in subsidy, huge. An unspoilt stretch of Cumbrian countryside, itself worthy of national park status, would be sacrificed to a politically correct fad which experience has shown gives small return for an immense cost."

Local people feel the development is totally unsuitable and will be detrimental to the area, both in visual and economic terms. The landscape has been acknowledged by central government organisations and committees as being of national significance.

The site is used to highlight the latest developments in the campaign against the windfarm and can be used to access information on the scheme and contact campaigners.

l There was standing room only at a packed Orton Village Hall when local people came together to hear about the windfarm plan last week.

Apart from a small number of supporters of windfarms, the meeting was overwhelmingly opposed to the scheme.

Ecologist and environmental scientist Sir Martin Holdgate outlined the problems of the greenhouse effect and global warming, and explained why the Government was keen to promote renewable energy sources.

Not opposed to windfarms in principle, Sir Martin said there was a desperate need for a strategy to prevent them cropping up in the wrong place. Whinash was a "classic" example of such a wrong place, he said. "They stick out in the landscape like a forest of big, sore white thumbs, and the cost to tourism and other industries and property values does need to be taken into account in the evaluation."

Biologist Dr Mike Hall said the turbines that could be built at Whinash would be around 290 to 320 feet tall, with a tip speed of 170 mph.

He pointed to the growth in demand for electricity, but said that windfarms would not produce the answer, and that it would require 130,000 turbines of the type currently being built to meet the shortfall in power in 2020

caused by growth in demand and the loss of the nuclear capacity.

"Wind can make only a small and unreliable contribution to UK energy demands. To approve the Whinash proposal would in fact amount to an act of legalised vandalism to the countryside in this area."

April 24, 2003 09:30