Campaigning continued in Sutton Bridge at the weekend as protestors tried to rally a mass public turnout for tomorrow’s verdict on a planned biomass power station.
Villagers have a host of fears over the £300million to £350million project from EnergyPark Sutton Bridge – also known as PREL – and want a guarantee there will be no health risk from its chimneys or from the combined impact of at least four power plants.
Sutton Bridge has a gas-fired power station with a second in the pipeline.
If the biomass plant is built at Wingland, EnergyPark’s operation will see ten of its 12 chimneys discharging into the atmosphere.
Residents say they are also likely to be affected by an “incinerator” set to be built 12 miles down the road at King’s Lynn.
South Holland District Council officers recommended approval of the biomass power station and the planning committee makes its decision at a meeting starting at 6.30pm tomorrow.
On Friday Bridge Against the Incinerator (BATI) chairman Craig Jackson and South Holland and The Deepings MP John Hayes were at the council’s Priory Road offices with a protest petition signed by almost 930 people.
Mr Hayes, the former Government Energy Minister, has warned the council he would be “very concerned if your authority ignored the direction of Government policy by taking insufficient account of public opinion”.
Village resident and parish councillor Shirley Giles gave Mr Jackson a further 215 copies of protest letters.
She described the council officers’ recommendation of approval as “absolutely shocking”.
Mrs Giles said: “We will have to contend with the emissions from four lots of chimneys.
“Why are there 12 chimney stacks when only ten will be in use? PREL say to make it look aesthetically pleasing. Surely, if one is only going to use ten, why go to the expense and trouble to build two extra or is it because they hope to bring them into use at a later date?”
BATI campaigners manned a stall in Bridge Road and gave out leaflets on Saturday and Sunday.
Mr Jackson fears the power station could be a Trojan horse to burn other materials and claims developers based their Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) on out of date emissions maps and excluded “other key receptors, such as the gas fired power station at King’s Lynn, the extension of the power station at King’s Lynn, the existing Palm plant and the proposed sludge combustor at the same site”.
He says the EIA also failed to take account of the second gas-fired power station at Sutton Bridge and councillors in King’s Lynn are maintaining an objection because of fears on cumulative emissions.
Speaking in Sutton Bridge in January, EnergyPark managing director Chris Williams said there will be no odour from the power station’s chimney stacks and technology is so advanced that air going out of the chimneys will be cleaner than air going in.
EnergyPark’s project director Helen Rome said lorry drivers would be ordered to stick to the A17 and A47 rather than use village roads.