Wednesday 21 March 2012

The Horns Of The Buffalo

I found the graphic (below) while I was surfing for information on Little Raith Windfarm which I'd heard had been given the go-ahead. Sure enough, there are 9 100m+ turbines going up on the land between the A92 and the Mossmorran Petrochemical Plant. "What's the big deal?", I hear you cry. Well, for one thing, the visual impact will be extreme for anyone living nearby. Mossmorran, despite being a large industrial site, is at least partially hidden by surrounding land. And the turbines will be close to Loch Gelly, the Loch of the Shining Waters, an important habitat for wildfowl, both resident and migratory.


Little Raith is shown in Blue, at the bottom of the graphic. Far more worrying, and I had to double-check this, is the Red area over in the top left. It lies within the bounds of The Lomond Hills Regional Park, or "The Meedies" as it's known locally and is the subject of a planning application for an "industrial-sized" wind factory. I can't help but feel that these fuckers are either taking the piss or simply trying to deflect attention away from other sites. (2 large turbines recently bypassed the planning process altogether via some deadline-related loophole).

Fife Council Planning Dept are currently "inundated" with applications and at least one Councillor has called for a halt until they can work out a coherent strategy. Local opposition is strong and growing stronger which is great to see but these things are easily missed if you're not actively looking.

Those light blue bits btw, are areas marked for housing development. That's houses that no one around here can afford or even wants. More greenfield concreted over and trees and hedgerows ripped up. The Horns of the Buffalo are closing in and the views that I currently enjoy will disappear one day soon.

2 comments:

AlanR said...

Reading Alan Sloman's last posting it seems it hardly matters if there is a massive No vote or not.
If the house builders have any sense they should pull out now. Who's going to buy houses you probably will struggle to sell.

Big Kev said...

The USP of these new houses will be the views the folk on this side of town get now. We've already said, if they build them, we're leaving.