Residents of the North Derbyshire villages of Whitwell, Hodthorpe, Belph and Creswell have another to celebrate this weekend as Alkane have withdrawn their application for an mega anaerobic digester on the edge of the village.
I don’t think anyone who has followed the twists and turns of this sage since the application was submitted nearly two years ago would doubt that the single biggest factor in achieving this brilliant outcome was the campaigning zeal of the public pressure group Whitwell Against Alkane. They have shown that ordinary people running a well organised and mobilised campaign can defeat even the vested interest of a large and wealthy private company. The writing is now on the wall for any Council that does not have public support for its actions.
Many people said that Whitwell Against Alkane were wasting their time but it can never be a waste of time to stand-up for what you believe in. It now seems that it was Alkane were not only wasting their money but tarnishing the reputation of a technology which can make an important contribution to preventing climate change if it is deployed in the right place. That is on the farm where the waste is produced not 40 miles away, hopefully Alkane now understand this.
Cllr Duncan Kerr
