Added a poll on to the blog to gauge reaction

It's very early days with the blog, but I thought I'd put a poll at the top which will allow people to vote on whether the South Witham CAFO proposals.
The results will need time to grow and stabilise - as with all polls, until the number of responses are statistically significant, it would be unwise to draw any conclusions from them.

A touch of class!

I emailed Glenda Jackson MP last night about the original Early Day Motion (Number 1037) on Large scale dairy units. The MP who put forward that motion was Eric Martlew, who retired at the last election, so I wanted to ensure that either that Early Day Motion was reinstated or a fresh one started.

I was very pleased to receive a call from Glenda herself this afternoon as I was driving home from work (hands free phone, honest!) and she told me that there is a new Early Day Motion (144) replacing that original one.

Public Meeting, 7th June, 2010

Well, talk about cowardly! The developers (Velmur Ltd) decided they didn't want to face the village residents and so decided to back out of the public meeting by citing that they felt they wouldn't get a fair hearing, due to the influence of outsiders from the village (I presume they mean people like WSPA and CIWF).

Nobody from Buckminster Estates - the land owner - was present and most felt thoroughly disappointed in that.

Instead, they dropped off their presentation to Mike Wilkins and asked him to present it to the village on their behalf - how bizarre!

In excess of two hundred people turned up to the meeting, where Martin gave the presentation from Velmur Ltd. This was followed by an hour of Q & A amongst the villagers and, ultimately, a show of hands for and agaisnt the proposal with all attendees NOT in favour of allowing the developers to proceed.

A good result - for round one.

Principal Acquifer

Unless I'm mistaken, the land on and surrounding the South Witham CAFO, is on a Principal Acquifer which was one of the reasons that the Environmental Agency objected to permission for the Nocton proposals. Looks like they will have the same issue in South Witham if they submit proposals officially.

The Environment Agency objected on the grounds that there was an unacceptable risk to groundwater due to a number of factors, including that the area was on a Principal Acquifer.

Velmur Ltd

The proposers of the CAFO in South Witham are a company called Velmur Ltd. Companies house don't list very much information on them, other than the company was formed on 11th November, 2008 and has yet to file any accounts. They are listed as being "c/o Private Research, International House" which, I'd cynically suggest, is a wise choice when you are trying to ensure you can't be traced (try putting "private research" into google and see how many hits you get!).

Their Directors are listed as:

Patrick Anglim
Paul Bowes
Michael James Walsh

According to Michael Walsh, their parent company is A.B.W. Partnership, for which very little information can be found, other than this article which doesn't sound very promising.

Added Twitter to the blog

I've created a Twitter account for SWACAFO and linked the "tweets" into the blog...see on the right hand side.

If anyone prefers Tweeting to Blogging, now's your chance to get involved.

I can give access to anyone who is involved, and give them some brief education reasonably quickly...let me know if you're interested.

Some new documents - Site plan and OS map positioning

Martin Wilkins has kindly sent me a couple of documents showing:

1. The site plan from Velmur Ltd. for the proposed CAFO.
2. The OS Map showing South Witham and the prposed CAFO.

As you can see, the site is at least one third the size of the whole village!

Anaerobic Digesters...not, in fact, a panacea for all the evils of a CAFO

The Velmur Ltd. proposal includes the provision of several Anaerobic Digesters, which they say will contain all of the manure produced and will be able to produce energy from it in a CHP plant (where the gas created in the digester is burnt to create power.

This article seems to refute most of that supposition, whilst also highlighting that the process is highly inefficient, doesn't get rid of all the odour and is backed by high subsidies (in the USA).

Doesn't sound very clever to me.

Parish Council meeting, 1st June, 2010

I attended the Parish Council meeting last night, in order to hear what Velmur Ltd had to say about their proposals for a CAFO in South Witham - it was an interesting meeting, to say the least.

The joint proposers of the CAFO are Buckminster Estates, who were represented, on the night, by their Estates Manager (I'm sorry, I didn't catch his name but when I find it, I'll update this post).

The meeting started with a presentation from the guys from Velmur Ltd which lasted about 45 minutes - Councillor Martin Wilkins (Parish Council Chairman) has asked for that presentation electronically, so hopefully it will be made available on this blog in due course. After the presentation was over, Martin began the response, and there followed an hour of energetic debate, which, from my perspective, appeared to leave many questions unanswered and, before they left, both Buckminster Estates and the Velmur Ltd team were left in no doubt, as to the strength of opposition to their proposals.

Some of the higlights of the debate were:

• Velmur Ltd stated that there is a milk shortage in this country, which is made up by imports - it's actually more complex than that given that the EU operates milk quotas and that, whilst the UK under achieves on it's quotas, so do almost all other EU bloc countries, except for the four largest milk producers.
• There will be an odour issue, but Velmur Ltd were unwilling to be specific about it. Although they made great efforts to talk about their Anaerobic Digesters which house the slurry, when pressed, they were unable to rebutt the fact that the slurry does not go straight from the cow to the Anaerobic Digester and therefore there will, without question, be an odour issue.
• Velmur Ltd are a "shell" company - incorporated on 11th November, 2008 and yet to file any accounts, according to Companies House - hardly a pedigree that instils trust.
• Whilst acknowledging that there are obvious animal welfare issues, they were put to one side by the Parish Council, purely on the basis that they have no bearing on the planning applications process.
• Allegedly, other sites have been considered by Velmur Ltd, but, despite the regulations in the USA requiring these farms to be at least four and in some cases, eight miles away from human habitation, due to public health issues, Velmur Ltd still want to develop this farm, which is one third the size of the whole village, right alongside South Witham, within 300m of the nearest houses.

The CAFO proposers will be back at the Village Hall on Monday 7th June, 2010 at 7pm to present the same pitch to the residents of the village. A significant turnout at that meeting, will send an even firmer message to the proposers, that they are not welcome in our village.

Nocton CAFO

I mentioned, on the opening post, the village of Nocton in Lincolnshire, who are having their own fight to stop a CAFO being developed there. The proposed "Super" Dairy in Nocton will be around three times (8100) the size of the one proposed for South Witham (2984), making it the largest dairy farm in Western Europe. I've not done enough research yet to work out whether the people behind the proposals for Nocton, are the same as those for South Witham, but there are more details on the proposal for Nocton, in this presentation.

As I understand it, the council asked the proposers for Nocton, to withdraw their application because they wanted further information on various aspects of the proposal - by all accounts, it is expected that the proposal either has, or will be resubmitted soon, so their fight is still ongoing.

The people of Nocton and the surrounding areas, appear to be well organised, just as I think we are.