Protect our countryside!! Stop Acorn Bioenergy building digestion plant on greenfield site

Take action today to help us protect our countryside, productive farmland, heritage site and wildlife habitat - and prevent a dangerous precedent from being set - before it’s too late.

So many local villages will be immediately impacted if the plans go ahead: Aynho, Brackley, Charlton, Cottisford, Croughton, Evenley, Farthinghoe, Fringford, Fulwell, Hardwick, Hethe, Hinton in the Hedges, Juniper, Mixbury, Turweston and Westbury. The list goes on - many more will be impacted by dangerous traffic levels on the A34, and those downstream of the site could be impacted by dangerous waste spills. (One in Devon killed 10,000 fish!)

It's morally indefensible for Acorn Bioenergy to build an anaerobic digestion plant on productive greenfield farmland, destroying beautiful and protected countryside. They are proposing to create one of the largest sites of its kind in the UK - the size of 13 football pitches and large enough to park 4,000 double decker buses, we ask you to take action and object to the plans for the following reasons:

• The site would be located too close to human habitation, within 250 metres of the nearest property and just over 1 mile to the nearest village.
• The operation of the site would lead to a life-threatening increase of heavy traffic on local roads, with as many as 9,000 additional HGV/tractors each year on the A43 and through nearby villages.
• The site’s construction would destroy an area of historical interest - the medieval village of Astwick is listed as a Scheduled Monument by Historic England and therefore cannot be developed or built on.
• The facility would release ammonia emissions into the air - these would not only smell pungent but also have potential to pollute the surrounding countryside. There are many examples of this happening across the country.
• There is potential to produce high levels of air pollutants that can include carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx) and sulphur dioxide (SO2), which among other conditions, have potential to cause respiratory illness.
• They plan to use up to 97,600 tonnes of crops, not just waste, every year to undergo anaerobic digestion. These plants are designed to use waste, NOT crops that could be used for food! (Find out more about why that’s a problem here.) It would require nearly 7,000 acres of farmland… that’s the equivalent of 4840 football pitches! That’s 7,000 acres taken out of food production, not to mention the potential food crops that would be taken out of circulation by destroying productive farmland to build the plant in the first place.

Together we can stop it. Visit stopacorn.org for more information and a link to Northamptonshire Planning Portal, where you can register your objection in more detail.