Hemingford turbine would combine eyesore with safety hazard

COMMENTS by Brian Wallis, chairman of Hemingford Grey Parish Council, in the Hunts Post story “No wind of change” (October 26, 2011) have outraged many residents of our village.

The contemptuous way Mr Wallis dismisses the efforts of one ‘vocal group’ to stop the erection of a 77-metre wind turbine at an already-approved intensive poultry farm at Galley Hill, on the outskirts of Hemingford Grey, are hardly worthy of someone who purports to be working on behalf of the village.

If Mr Wallis is unaware of the fact, he may like to learn that it isn’t a small band of nimbies who do not want to see a monstrous 253-feet wind turbine, together with 18 overground tanks to store liquid propane gas, only 100 metres from the busy St Ives junction of the A14.

A petition to be presented to Huntingdonshire District Council, which has gone around some parts of the village, has already produced more than 350 names. There would have been many more had the organisers had time to cover the whole of Hemingford Grey.

They were not allowed that time because Hemingford Grey Parish Council seems anxious to keep the whole planning proposal as secretive as possible. Why?

This poultry farm has plans for a turnover of 320,000 chickens every six weeks, or around two million each year – more than double the previous operation on this site.

The number of vehicles alone that will be needed to carry out this operation on a busy and dangerous junction of the notorious A14, together with the visual hazard of a 77-metre turbine to drivers on the road, makes the scheme sheer madness.

Add to that potential problems of smells, the hazard to wildlife and the visual aspect on our beautiful village, and it is easy to understand why residents are saying ‘No way’.

But this isn’t just a Hemingford Grey problem. We also have to think about the safety of thousands of motorists who use the A14 every day.

Are you listening, Mr Wallis?

JOHN EDGLEY

Priors Road

Hemingford Grey