Trump team at debate on windfarms
Credit: By Leeza Clark, The Courier & Advertiser, www.thecourier.co.uk 20 February 2012 ~~
Senior members of Donald Trump’s New York team are expected to take part in a major debate on windfarm developments in Fife next week.
The event, on March 1, is the first public information event with a range of Scottish experts on wind energy to be staged in St Andrews.
Given the controversy over proposed windfarms around St Andrews and elsewhere in Fife, the organisers are anticipating a full house at the Town Hall.
They have now learned that members of the American tycoon’s team have also pledged to be there.
Recent objections to St Andrews University’s windfarm by the Old Course Hotel, among others, have echoed Mr Trump’s concerns that industrial windfarms in areas favoured by golfers and tourists will wreck the landscape and harm those industries.
Mr Trump has written to First Minister Alex Salmond accusing him of being “hellbent on destroying Scotland’s coastline”.
He objects to plans for a windfarm near his Aberdeenshire golf resort and has warned he would abandon his proposals for a hotel and houses on the Menie Estate if the development is approved.
It is in the midst of growing tensions over plans that a north-east Fife community council has organised the groundbreaking public forum.
Cameron Community Council said that, love them or loathe them, wind turbines are coming to Fife.
From industrial windfarms to back-garden turbines, Fife is facing a torrent of applications.
Community council chairman Gordon Ball said: “People are frightened and concerned by the prospect of these turbines.
“As a community council, it’s part of our job to make sure our communities have accurate information about the wind farms and turbines we are being asked to live with.”
Mr Ball invited John Mayhew, the director of the Association for the Protection of Rural Scotland, who gave a talk to the community council last summer.
He explained the background to the plan to make Scotland the “Saudi Arabia of wind”.
Joining Mr Mayhew will be former grid control engineer and When Will The Lights Go Out author Derek Birkett, and Scottish MEP Struan Stevenson.
Also taking part will be Dave Bruce who has wide-ranging knowledge on all aspects of windfarm development and Graham Lang, and expert on the planning process and cofounder of EFTAG, a website which mape east Fife turbine proposals.
There will be a question-and-answer forum, and the meeting at 7.15pm on March 1 is free and open to all.
[alternate headline: Trump team expected to attend Cameron Community Council's debate on Scotland's renewable energy plans]
