Mayor: difficult to see how wind turbine could be rejected
Artist's impression of the proposed wind turbine on Hackney Marshes
Hackney’s Mayor, Jules Pipe, has told the Citizen he has difficulty imagining a scenario in which public opinion would cause the Council to scrap its controversial proposals for a wind turbine on East Marsh.
The two month consultation aimed at gauging public opinion on the turbine, which the Council claims would make Hackney one of London’s greenest boroughs, enters its final week today.
But last month, in an interview with the Citizen, the Mayor appeared to suggest that certain objections to the turbine were invalid, saying, “I struggle to define off the top of my head what people would have to overwhelmingly say to make us not do it.”
The Mayor has consistently defended the proposals in the local press, claiming that, together with energy from a second turbine at Eton Manor, energy from the East Marsh one would power almost all Hackney’s street lights.
But the proposals have proved divisive nonetheless: Johnnie Walker, Chairman of Hackney and Leyton Football League, has attacked them as an “incursion” into the Marshes; Annie Chipchase, Chairwoman of Hackney Marshes User Group, has called them “ad hoc greenwash”.
The Council maintains there would be no reduction in the number of football pitches on East Marsh – and the proposals have won the blessing of influential environmental group Friends of the Earth.
Mr Pipe told the Citizen the Council would ditch its proposals if the overwhelming majority of local people responded negatively to them. But he suggested that aesthetics were not a legitimate basis for such objections.
Mr Pipe also said that a majority of people objecting to the turbine on the basis of its appearance was “a very hypothetical scenario”.
He said, “I struggle to define off the top of my head what people would have to overwhelmingly say to make us not do it.
“It would be a balance. If it were closer to housing and there were plenty of people who could give evidence of noise and people who could evidence light flicker, that would all have to be weighed up.
“But if we didn’t think there was a fair chance of those issues not arising, no one would have approached us about doing it in the first place, because they would have known it wouldn’t get through.”
Aspects of the turbine plan remain to be clarified however, including its ecological impact and the extent to which it is part of wider plans by the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA).
The Council maintains the turbine would have no significant impact on local populations of bats and birds, but East London Lines, a news website, recently claimed local people have been forced to use the Freedom of Information Act to prise information from the powers-that-be about the ecological impacts of installing a turbine on East Marsh – and that vital information had yet to be provided.
In his interview with the Citizen, the Mayor steadfastly rejected suggestions that the Council’s wind turbine consultation was not a genuine listening exercise, saying, “This is actually the Council going out and saying, ‘What do you think? We think it’s a good idea, come on board with this idea.’
“People might respond and say they think it’s a bad idea, but I think many people in Hackney will come on board and say ‘I think it’s a good idea’ and that will strengthen the Council’s leadership role in saying this is a good thing to do and to roll out.”
The Mayor reiterated his claim that the Council would seek to get an income, by way of ground rent, from the turbine, and that this money would be invested in sports facilities on East Marsh.
Consultation is here.
Closes Monday 14 December 2009.