CLICK HERE TO HAVE YOUR SAY ON THE HOOK MOOR WIND FARM ISSUE.

YOUR VIEWS:

I live in the village of Micklefield and yes I am in favour of green energy. We already have a landfill sited at the back of Micklefield which is providing Green energy from the production of methane gas.

But I do object to the planned development of the windfarm. Elsewhere in Europe and other countries they do not place any of these structures close to Dwellings. Having just been to Holland we saw wind farms, at the port and in the sea, but not near dwellings. Why is it that elsewhere they are not willing to take the risk of the possibility of affecting peoples health yet in this country this is not even a concern?!

There is not enough evidence to support the developers claims that noise levels and any other interference will not affect lives. What evidence that is now becoming available from existing sites is that the developers claims are unfounded and that these sites do affect lifes and homes.

Micklefield as an ex mining community, is striving hard to improve and foster community spirit and to improve the village for all the residents and I feel that this development will have a serious detrimental effect on this.

I think this development is central government policy gone mad. Yes we need green energy and no one disagrees with that but surely ruining the local landscape and prime Grade 1 A agricultural land for ever is not the way to do it how green is that.

Ann Hughes

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As residents of Aberford we are delighted at the latest rejection of the wind farm appication. Banks were incredibly confident at their initial exhibition and slightly underestimated the tenacity, feelings, knowledge and contacts of Micklefield, Aberford and the residents of surrounding areas.

Like many, we approve of a greener way of living, but to plonk these monstrosities in the middle of a village, on the edge of a motorway-causing massive distraction on a very busy part-would be dangerous.

I dont profess to be an expert, but the noise and vibration caused by these turbines has caused many well documented illnesses and severe distress to people who have been too close to them.

In a conference in Lyon recently 23 out of 24 countries admitted there was a problem with noise and vibration if placed too near to private dwellings. The UK has not yet acknowledged this!

The Hook Moor propsal is incredibly near to many private dwellings and would be on an area of beauty also.

Keep up the fight Leeds planners! And well done to Micklefield!
Mrs G Knowles

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I don't get how people can claim to be in support of 'becoming green' when they object to a proposal like this. Its one thing to separate off your recycleable materials into your green bins every week and think you've cleared your conscience and you're being good to the environment, but for most people this is where there 'greeness' ends.

I have no problem with people objecting to windfarms and other forms of renewable energy being placed near them, if they're willing to stop using electricity. This means no lights, TV, cooking and everything else we take for granted but until we are willing to stop using all these things, some compromises have to be made.

For goodness sake, what better place to site a wind farm, than by the side of a scar on the landscape caused by our environmentally damaging gas guzlers ? I would also like to argue the point made, that the wind farm wouldn't be 'in the middle of the town' of Micklefield, its on the other side of this busy motorway which itself creates noise and vibrations which were the other ladies two main objections.

Everyone today has this attitude of 'not in my back garden', but if not here, in a perfect location, then where? Surely some sacrifices have to be made. I live in Micklefield and would be overjoyed to look out over these wind turbine. They may not be the prettiest of things but there again, neither are the the blotted scars we leave all over the landscape from road expansions, landfilling, quarrying, mining etc but all these things have been accepted by todays society, so why not this feature thats actually being of some great environmental benefit
Annoymous

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I live 930 m from a wind farm in Spalding, Lincolnshire. We have effectively had to abandon our home.

Our house is now likely to have a value of just the land £35K to £50K and would not be marketable as a home for people to live in any longer.

As a result of our difficulties we have been forced to rent a house to sleep in which is 5 miles away.

Our house is downwind of the prevailing wind. The wind farm was built last summer (2006) and as soon as it became operational we started having problems with the noise and hum coming from it.

We did not object to the windfarm in the planning stage as we did not think that there would be any issues for us, and we believed that wind power was a good way of meeting the energy gap. Since last June 2006 we have had constant issues with loud noises and low frequency sounds that create a hum in the house all the time.

Many times last summer we were woken by loud 'whooshing' noises, which stopped us sleeping for more than four hours a night. Our local environmental health department came out and was astonished at the loud noises that they made. We now know that 20 per cent of wind farms DO have a noise problem at some point and five per cent have a really bad problem as we do.

We now know that we suffer from aerodynamic or amplitude modulation. The UK government has found it necessary to set a specific measurement for wind turbine noise anyway, and has publicly acknowledged that Aerodynamic modulation is not fully understood by scientists so that means that no developer can categorically state that there will not be a noise problem.

We know that not every wind farm creates noise issues but those that do make life impossible for those who live near them i.e less than 1.5 miles.

And – most annoyingly "our" turbines only produce an average of 24 per cent of their predicted output over the year!
Jane Davis, Spalding, Lincs

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