100 signatures reached
To: Gregory Barker MP, Department of Energy & Climate Change
Stop the Power Station in Eye
Dear Minister, please stop plans to build a 299MW gas-fired Power Station in the tiny town of Eye in Suffolk
Why is this important?
A company called Progress Power is applying to the government for permission to carry out plans to build a Power Station on Eye Airfield industrial estate. Eye is an ancient town with over one hundred listed buildings and about 2,000 inhabitants. Progress Power say they posted the area with 17,000 information leaflets last year, yet not one entered my postbox.
An awareness group has been formed locally called Common Concern http://commonconcern.onesuffolk.net through which I first heard about this power station. It is almost too late for protest as the government is about to give Progress Power the go-ahead, partly because very little local protest was voiced. Of course, this is because it seems to have been kept carefully under wraps.
We have seen no plans for mitigation and, in fact, the plans that are available from Progress Power are out of date and unreadable. Each visualisation is a bird's eye view and the enormous size and height of the buildings is completely understated. The airfield already has four large wind turbines, which can be seen for miles around, a waste disposal site and a chicken litter power plant, along with many other light industries. I think this is more than enough of a contribution to energy and conservation from the people of Eye.
We don't want a huge power station in Eye, it seems totally unsuited to the site. The A140 road, beside which it will be built, is already heavily overloaded with traffic and the hazards created by the building and servicing of this site will cause even more danger.
We want Progress Power to think again about the site they choose, if indeed the power station is necessary at all. It is apparently only going to run 60 days a year as a back-up source, but the inhabitants of Eye will have the huge eyesore for 365 days a year, plus noise and light pollution. Switching a power station on and off causes more pollution and noise than continuous running. After 25 years when the power station becomes obsolete, it will be left standing as the safest form of closure.
Eye, so far, is a place of quiet and dark nights, where the night sky can easily be seen. This is not the right place.
