Navitas Wind Farm

There are a number of issues which are beginning to tax resident’s energy not the least is the offshore Navitas Wind farm proposal. I blog about this because although way out of our league in terms of decision making, Christchurch and the whole Jurassic coast are the places most affected by the visual impact as a result of these monster turbines erected so close to the shoreline. So that everyone who is angst about the potential project we as Christchurch councillors are digging deep into the details to establish some sort of benefit/harm attitude which will give us a firm basis for argument should we be forced into strongly objecting to the project. My own view is that we should be working to establish a coastline management group comprising members and officers from all affected districts/boroughs so that a composite approach to the matter can be established. This worked well for the Shore Management issue of coastal flooding, sea rise and coastal erosion and I think this should be repeated. Further I think that we as members should be taking hold of the issue of sustainable energy in the Borough and become far more pro-active in understanding if there are new solutions, after all if we as a Borough were totally self sufficient in energy production we would not need the Navitas farm at all! To this end I am meeting with officers this week to get some sort of direction and our port-folio holder for the environment has just returned from an important and very relevant seminar on this whole green issue. The objective I am setting is to simply find a better way. This is long term stuff but unless we start to tackle it and be seen to care about it then we will be confronted by big projects like Navitas for which our kids kids will be paying for.