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Old 17-09-2012, 14:35   #35
Houseboy
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Re: Oswaldtwistle Moor

The whole problem here is not really the dirt or the entrance (definitely on Hassy Road by the way) but the windfarm itself. There is a lot of money to be made from windfarms. Money is paid to landowners and the developers/owners get money from the government similar to the feed-in tariff from solar power.
I have covered this subject quite a lot in an environment publication and the conclusion seems to be that there is doubt as to just how much benefit to the environment there actually is.Windfarms are really not that efficient, there is a long running debate about how much electricity they are capable of producing when you consider that they actually use a percentage of the power they produce in the first place. If you balance this against the downside, the blot on the landscape, the danger to flying wildlife and what is called "shadowflash", a phenomenon which is basically a constant flicker upon nearby buildings (under certain circumstances) that has led some people to suggest an affect on people with photo-sensitive epilepsy (unproved as yet).
I am not convinced of their value (as indeed is the case with many experts) and their presence on hilltops is undeniably a bad thing for the visual environment.
As for being able to stop them from being developed at any stage, this is incredibly difficult due to special planning laws with regard to them (some local authorities have been overruled by national government, which is committed to more of them, regardless of political persuasion). Very few communities have ever stopped them (I don't know of any but I am sure there have been one or two).
One thing is for certain, whatever the value to the environment and the money made by the developers, nobody will see a reduction in electricity bills because of them.
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