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My response to this application, WSCC/88/09/NM has evolved over four phases:
Phase 1
The description of the proposed plant at the November 24 briefing came completely out of the blue and stunned me. As described it seemed a threat to the whole living environment that I had enjoyed and sought to protect over 32 years. I was appalled. It took me over two weeks to recover my balance. I then sought to come to terms with it.
I talked to officers in County and District, I went to see SEEDA’s AD adviser near Winchester, I corresponded with the AD expert at the Chartered Institute of Waste Management. I concluded that the application could not be stopped and that the best I could do on my own behalf and on behalf of my ward was to press for changes to minimise the impact. I reasoned that County under pressure to meet emission reduction targets would welcome the application. And it has to be said that as an environmentalist, committed to reducing our carbon footprint, and a former executive speechwriter for the EA I was in favour of the technology. This country lags in renewable energy. Germany has over 1000 AD plants, all, by the way, half megawatt. I also hated the thought of joining the NIMBY club.
Phase 2
It was my idea to visit a plant in Germany. Langmead Farms had told us that their plans were modelled on plants in Germany of which they had visited a large number. Langmead Farms fixed the visit. I went with the finance director of Ashmarden Farms that has several properties in Merston. We paid our own expenses. A salesman of a company that Langmead Farms is considering as a supplier for its plant took us to one of his sites near Bremen. Two Langmead Farms executives were with us.
It has been argued that we were just shown what Langmead Farms wanted us to see. Well, yes and no. We could doubtlessly have set up our own visit to a plant plucked out of Google and I speak reasonable German. But it is standard practice in business to take potential customers to reference sites. You go with your eyes open. You may see a better than average site but it is up to you to ask the right questions. The finance director and I certainly did that and Langmead Farms made no attempt to direct the course of questioning or produce the answers.
The impact of the visit was to reassure me to some extent. I saw an actual plant functioning, a teleloader extracting the maize under its cover sheet and loading the food hopper, went up a ladder to an inspection window on one of the digesters to see the paddles at work, smelt the maize, smelt the digestate drawn off in a bucket, went into the CHP unit to see how the process is monitored both on site and remotely by the supplier to optimise the mix of input to maximise the amount of methane produced, inspected the pump room, put on ear muffs to see the engine room.
We went outside, listened to the noise it made from 100 metres, listened to the whining noise from the engines on the mixers attached to the outside of the digesters. We had a chance to visit one neighbour totally unannounced. An independent professional person, with her grown up son also present, she provided straight answers. We noted there were houses behind the plant less than 100 metres distant.
Having been so shattered by the first impressions I had formed on first hearing about the Langmeads’ plant, it was in fact something of a surprise to find that the Bremen plant was relatively quiet, there was no smell and its visual impact was not so overpowering as I had imagined. But there were important differences compared with the one planned for Runcton. It was a half megawatt plant compared to one megawatt, it was a smaller footprint, there was one teleloader, the digesters were 12 metres high as against 16, there were just three of them as against five, there was no open lagoon. The digestate, not separated between solid and liquid, was stored in a covered tower. The CHP was powered by one gas engine, Langmeads may need two. It was also winter temperature. Would there be smell in the summer?
Phase 3
On our return, Ashmarden Farms and I had discussions with Langmead Farms on the lessons from the visit we thought they should take on board, in relation to height of towers, the redundancy of the extra digesters, an air tight cover for the lagoon etc etc. I was not negotiating of behalf of residents. I had not sought nor had any such authority. It would be up to the planning committee to set any conditions it thought fit. I was still working on the assumption that permission would be given whatever I did and that I should seek to get the best deal. I knew nothing I was seeking would be contrary to what residents wanted. Whether it would be enough was another matter. The application in the form it had been submitted I continued to oppose. And I made no commitment to support the application if all the changes pressed for were made.
Phase 4
However sitting in on parish council meetings at North Mundham and Oving and holding a meeting of my own, it was clear that the opposition by residents to the whole idea was very strong indeed. There was some criticism that I didn’t make my position clear at the public meetings. But first of all I had not formulated my position and secondly it is not appropriate for a district councillor to give a position when planning applications are considered. I am not a member of the planning of either parish council. I did report however when invited to on my visit to Germany and on the mitigating measures being discussed.
As the deadline for comment approached I continued to study the application, noting its lack of clarity, the omission of important facts and its many misrepresentations. On January 20, as did others from the parishes, I had a conversation with a government adviser on bio energy plants whose visit was arranged and paid for by Langmead Farms. I ensured Langmead Farms personnel were not present at the interview.
As a consequence of all this work and all these meetings, and they dominated my time and robbed me of sleep for the best part of two months, my thoughts crystallised and I decided to object to the application, still in its original form, head on. End of round one.
What next?
We understand that Langmead Farms will submit amendments or a totally new application in the next few weeks. There will then be a further period of consultation of say two to three weeks when people who have registered support or objections will be invited to make any changes to their original submission in the light of the amendments.
This just demonstrates that Langmeads went about this the wrong way. When Onyx, part of Veolia Environmental Services, decided over a decade ago to build incinerators, likely to be opposed by the community, in Hampshire, the company at the pre application stage approached local communities in Portsmouth and Chineham, told them about their plans, explained the technology and invited them to contribute to the planning process. This they did in a variety of ways eg in the design of the structures and routing of vehicles. As a result the community took ownership and the plans were approved without much opposition. The discussions Langmead Farms has been having these last several weeks it should have been having before submitting the application. Whether it would have resulted in changes that would have made the application acceptable, I cannot say. But the approach should have been tried.
Showstoppers?
Will residents, will I, support the plans if all the changes are made that I have pushed for? The neighbour I spoke to at the Bremen plant said four things: there was no smell, she was disturbed by the loading of food hopper on Sunday mornings when she liked to sleep, she was greatly annoyed by all the tractors passing her door taking maize to the plant at certain times of the year, and she didn’t much like the view of the towers.
Langmeads may be able to satisfy us they can control the odour but they have form on that account. They may be able to attenuate the noise. Highways may sign off on their traffic movements but the fact of the concentration of movements in one month must be made clear. But visual intrusion and the thin end of a wedge to an industrial estate may be intractable.
As I walk along Marsh Lane as I do every day and look up to the site, and as I drive down Drayton lane and at the roundabout face the Chichester Food Park, I can imagine the effect of AD towers. Even at 12 metres high, even if dull green in colour, they are going to stand out. (The SEEDA adviser said that visual intrusion was the single most serious obstacle to planning permission for these plants). With the existing pack house, that 20 years has done nothing to screen, you will be entering an industrial estate. In 50 years it will be renamed the Chichester Food Park and Industrial Estate. Farmland will be just a memory.
If Langmeads, in their resubmission, were to go for a half megawatt plant, with no redundant towers and by some means get the three towers to below 12 metres, with a smaller footprint, I might need to think again.
Correct the record
Whether they do so or not they should fully revise the document to state the truth about the plant namely that it is not a recycling facility but a bio energy plant. The word is never used in the documentation. Could it be that they so described it to ensure the application came before County who deal with waste and who signed off the permanent processing of green waste in October last on the nod? As a straight bio energy plant it would come before Chichester District Council who opposed their bringing cooking on to the site some four years back. Perish the thought.
Stephen Quigley
January 25, 2010
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