One of the visits was from a resident who gave us the local perspective from those opposed to the high polluting power station. The first thing he mentioned is that we had already had a 'positive impact' in that the power station had gone into "tick over" mode. This means that it is currently not producing power. "If you look at the smoke coming out of the cooling tower, you can see that there's hardly anything there. Normally there'd be plumes coming up to double the size of the towers."
So a first victory in the fight against Greenhouse gas emmissions. Well sort of, ... or maybe not ... after all we are in Mega Watt Valley and there are other power stations which are taking up the slack.
Our visitor gave us a bit of a history from the perspective of local people. Three years ago, with the backing of John Grogan MP, the power station applied to use Petcoke / Coal Blend. In 2003 Drax the Environmental Agency gave permission for a 18 month trial.
http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/regions/northeast/411697/944584/?version=1〈=_e
http://www.selbytoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=994&ArticleID=840890
Selby Council Council expresses disappointment in the Environment Agency's decision to carry out petcoke/coal blends combustion trial at Drax Power Station. They express concerns about the increase in Sulphur Dioxide, Nickel and Vanadium. http://www.selby.gov.uk/news_detail.asp?id=169&menuid=2
Our local visitor told us to have a look through the articles from Selby Times to get more details about the on-going opposition to the Drax Power Station. A search of their site for "drax" and "sulphur" brings up some dirty info.
http://www.selbytoday.co.uk/template/results2.aspx?SearchText=drax%20sulphur&SearchType=Normal&PageId=1
The Selby Times also has some interesting letters about the Climate Camp:
http://www.selbytoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=3535&ArticleID=1715950
http://www.selbytoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=3535&ArticleID=1715952
Comments
Hide the following 3 comments
Its not smoke
30.08.2006 19:04
J
maybe but perhaps they meant the single tower
30.08.2006 22:53
dunno
chimney
06.09.2006 12:50
grapefruit