Parish council fights biogas plant proposal
A parish council has voted unanimously against a proposal for a biogas plant on a farm just outside a conservation village in an area of great landscape value.
Castle Bytham parish council held a public meeting in the village to hear about the proposal for treating 30,000 tons a year of food waste by anaerobic digestion to turn it into gas to produce electricity and fertiliser.
The meeting of village residents before the parish council meeting raised concerns about traffic and the possibility of water contamination, and voted against the proposal by a vast majority, said parish council clerk Muriel Cooke.
The council decided that the plant was too large and in the wrong place.
Lincolnshire County Council will decide on the planning application for the plant next month after consideration was deferred at a meeting earlier this month.
The application for the plant was made by Bygen Power Ltd., where Castle Bytham resident Bruce Brown is a director.
Mr Brown, 30, is the son of the farmer at Angel Wells farm, Morkery Lane, Castle Bytham, the site of the proposed plant.
"We believe this is a very good project," said Mr Brown. "In Europe there are dozens of these plants dotted all over the countries, and we think it is time that England caught up."
He said that fears about odour from the plant were groundless because the smell came from methane gas that the operators wanted to gather to generate electricity, so they would make every effort to prevent it escaping.
He expected the waste to fuel the plant to be delivered by eight trucks a day from south and east Lincolnshire and Melton Mowbray, meaning 16 vehicle movements that would not pass through the village, but would travel directly between the plant and the A1.
The plant would consume the 200 tons of waste produced every year by free range ducks reared in the poultry sheds at the farm, together with the food waste from the surrounding area.
It would produce enough electricity to supply 1400 homes which would contribute to Lincolnshire's renewable energy targets, and 25,500 tons of bio-fertiliser annually which would be spread on the surrounding 510 hectares of agricultural land, avoiding the need to import nitrogen, phosphate and potash to the area.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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