February 24, 2012
Scotland

Locals say no to Mormond Hill windfarm

The Fraserburgh Herald, www.fraserburghherald.co.uk 24 February 2012

The final count of public representations to go to Aberdeenshire planning department has revealed that the Mormond Hill Wind Farm has been rejected by a margin of almost two to one by local residents.

Turbine Free Mormond Hill group member, Barbara-Ann Burnett, welcomed the news stating: “We are delighted with this result. The response from locals to the threat of a wind farm on Mormond Hill has been overwhelming with a massive 178 people taking time to lodge objection representations to the planning department, 88% of whom come from within a ten-mile radius of Mormond Hill.”

“We were initially disappointed that the bare figures seemed to show a majority of support letters, however on detailed examination of the responses online it soon became apparent that the vast majority of supporters are from further afield.

“Further examination seems to show that around 100 of the support letters are very similar in format and wording, with 13 examples of identically worded letters from different addresses.”

“However, the people who count, local people, those that will be directly affected by the wind farm have come out strongly against the project.

“They have expressed their fears that something valuable will be lost if their hill is allowed to be destroyed by this wind farm.”

The final representations are available to view on the Aberdeenshire planning website and show that there were 223 representations in favour of the wind farm, of which 140 (63%) were beyond ten miles of Mormond Hill.

Only 21 of the objection letters (12%) were not from the local area.

The application for the 12 turbine wind farm is expected to come before committee soon.

Miss Burnett added: “Hopefully local councillors will take the public representations into account when making their final decision.”

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/02/24/locals-say-no-to-mormond-hill-windfarm/