The Castle Farm Community project made news today with inclusion in the Kent Messenger newspaper. In a reasonably balanced article they provided some of the essential details of the scheme but left out a few key facts:

  1. The proposed turbine is actually relatively small by modern standards at 31m hub height. This is less than half the height of typical large scale turbines such as those in New Romney and elsewhere.
  2. Castle Farm has a line of EDF overhead power lines and pylons crossing it. The proposed wind turbine hub height is slightly less than the pylon height and therefore will not dominate the landscape
  3. In their official Screening Response, Maidstone Borough Council concluded “The proposed development would not be likely to have significant effects on the environment by virtue if factors such as its nature, size or location”

For details of the Castle Farm wind turbine scheme click here

This week (2/7/2010) the KM ran a second article entitled Turbine will not dominate the skyline which was based on the release below:

Despite the mild attempt at sensationalism in the title, the article was reasonably balanced actually. We would however like to make a couple a points not addressed fully:

  1. The turbine is under half the height of most modern large turbines like those at New Romney or offshore.
  2. Castle Farm has a row of high voltage overhead lines crossing it, whose pylons are 35m tall – ie taller than the hub height of the turbine. From the A26 (Teston to Barming) the turbine will not dominate the skyline due to its proximity to the power lines. In their official Screening Response, Maidstone Borough Council concluded “The proposed development would not be likely to have significant effects on the environment by virtue of factors such as its nature, size or location”
  3. Following last weeks emergency budget, everyone knows county, borough and ultimately parish budgets are going to face severe cuts. Any community blessed with a good wind resource might rightly ask whether it is possible to harness this source of energy for local benefit. Our community investment scheme will allow just that.
  4. The extra income will help secure the ongoing financial viability of Castle Farm as a working fruit farm and more importantly, a source of local employment. This is not simply farmer rhetoric – Castle Farm is battling to make profits outside of the supermarket dominated mono-culture fruit supply system.
  5. There will of course, be people who object simply because they hate wind turbines. These groups are often well organised and very vocal – We’re hoping that anyone who supports renewable energy generation and wind turbines will also make their voice heard – at a recent public meeting in Somerset the vast majority of attendees who completed a questionnaire expressed “strong support” with only two respondents not in favour. Recent polls suggest that as much as 70% of the population support wind turbines.

We’re sure many people will, at first, worry about the news of a wind turbine. However once they appreciate the modest scale of the proposal most will wonder what the fuss is about. This is exactly the reaction we’ve had to date.

Of course, no lunch is for free and there can be real issues resulting from inappropriately sited wind turbines – for example the 120m turbine only 60m from the nearest house that was featured on BBC1’s “The One Show” a few weeks back. At Castle Farm the proposed turbine is only 44m to blade tip and 300m from the nearest properties.

Ecology is another important consideration – at Castle Farm we have consulted with Natural England, The Kent Wildlife Trust, RSPB and the Kent Ornithological Society as well as commissioning a local independent ecologist to undertake a general wildlife and habitat study and subsequently a detailed bat survey. No evidence of rare or endangered species were found and bat activity was very low.

We firmly believe that with a medium sized community scale turbine we’ve struck the right balance between price/performance, visual impact and reward for the local community. At the public meetings John Zamick (DistGen CEO) will describe how the community investment scheme would work if the turbine goes ahead.