24th February 2010

WEYMOUTH & PORTLAND: Portland power plant protest

‘We will not stand quietly by’ say demonstrators

by Harry Walton

A MARCH is being organised this Saturday (February 27th) to protest against a scheme to build a green energy power plant on Portland.

Councillors granted applicants W4BRE planning permission for the scheme in Portland Port near Balaclava Bay on a 6-5 vote to the fury of opponents who generated 800 protest letters and a Portland petition signed by 400 island residents against the plant.

Now NOPE - the No Oil Palm Energy pressure group - is to hold a protest march against the power plant.

It will be led by a samba band and will leave from outside the Heights Hotel at 11.30am before winding through Fortuneswell to arrive outside Portland Port at noon.

Portland resident and NOPE member Catherine Bennett said: “We will not stand quietly by and watch as this unwanted and unsustainable power plant is built.

“Our protest march is just the beginning of a campaign to make sure the concerns of local residents and those who will suffer the loss of their forests to make way for palm oil plantations are taken above the interests of the few people who will make money from this dirty scheme.”

South Dorset Liberal Democrat candidate Ros Kayes said: “We are going to go national on this. Palm oil was billed as an environmentally friendly solution to peak oil but more and more people are realising that the impact it makes where it is grown is devastating to the landscape and the people.”

But Weymouth and Portland planning manager Debbie Redding told councillors ahead of the narrow planning committee approval that the sustainability or otherwise of the fuel itself and its source were not material planning considerations.

W4BRE hopes to use the plant to generate electricity for the national grid by processing 40,000 tonnes of vegetable oil per annum and converting it into 30,000 tonnes of oil for the power plant which should generate 17.8MW of power to the grid.

Among concerns voiced by protesters are that the power plant will harm residents’ health and that the palm oil being used comes from Indonesia where they claim growing the crop has been shown to lead to deforestation and the displacement of indigenous people while also pushing animals such as orangutans to the brink of extinction.

WEYMOUTH & PORTLAND: Portland power plant protest

Comments

Add new comment