Make your views heard AS the Biomass Power Station project is a Development of National Significance (DNS), the planning application is not being handled by Pembrokeshire County Council, but the Planning Inspectorate in Cardiff: a regrettable situation as far as local democracy is concerned, but people must not be discouraged when it comes to raising objections.

Under the DNS rules, the Planning Inspectorate requires PCC as the local planning authority to submit a Local Impact Report.

The submission deadline for the Local Impact Report is also the date for interested parties to lodge their objections to the project, so unfortunately the people of Pembrokeshire will not know what is in the report until it is too late to do anything about it.

Friends of the Earth Pembrokeshire are therefore openly urging the county council to ensure that their Local Impact Report includes the following crucial points: lWhilst Egnedol say their proposed 60 metre high chimney will adequately disperse smoke and fumes, the base of that chimney won’t be far above sea level. All of us have seen plumes spreading horizontally from refinery chimneys during strong winds, so logically there is a risk of the Egnedol plume grounding when it encounters the higher land to the north of the site: for example, just outside Steynton the Ordnance Survey datum is 70m, and it is 73m just east of the new Johnston School.

Egnedol no longer propose to resurrect the old Gulf rail connection for fuel handling, therefore their consumption of 100,000 tonnes a year of prepared Welsh biofuel will result in, we estimate, an extra 16,000 annual HGV movements in the county, with 8,000 of these involving journeys through Pembroke Dock.

ELEANOR CLEGG

Pembrokeshire Friends of the Earth