Four Dells Biomass boiler retrospective application
Four Dells Farm, Poles Lane, Otterbourne SO21 2DY (application number 17/01081/HCS)
Table of Contents
County Councillor Jan Warwick reports:
HCC’s Regulatory Committee will consider the Four Dells Biomass boiler retrospective application at its meeting on 24th January 2018. [The agenda will be available the week before the meeting]
The application is now open for public consultation up to 27th December.
The most significant problem is the emergency release of steam from the chimney whenever there is a fault with the boiler process. This should NOT be a regular event however up to last weekend there had been four or five emergency steam releases for various reasons (power cut, blockages etc) and there were more than five releases this Saturday evening between the hours of 2100 and 0400 when the remote operator did not respond to the fault in the process. This disturbed many households in the area.
The main issues for consideration are:
- Competence of the site operators/manager to safely manage the site
- Suitability of the out of hours ‘cover’ – this is managed remotely via a computer link. Should the site be staffed on site 24 hours (as the boiler runs 24/7)?
- Requirement for a supplier audit trail – the wood should not be treated in any way to avoid toxic fumes
- Noise levels from the emergency steam release (sounds like a jet engine) and can be heard up to a mile away from the site. Unless the sound of emergency steam release can be significantly reduced this site is too close to residential properties and other businesses to be safe.
- Noise levels and dust from the wood shredding process (other businesses operate on the Four Dells site including Doggy Day Care next door)
- Assurances around the nature of the particle outflow from the chimney
- Access and security at the site – the site is relatively open and accessible out of hours to anyone wanting to gain entry
- Control on delivery vehicles – I followed a large open truck to the site last week – it was dropping quite large branches as it went along – open trucks should be netted and keep to the speed limit.
- A limit on the hours allowing noisy site works such as wood shredding
Please tell me if there are other issues you would wish to see conditioned.
WCC are also involved in this application in that they issue the license to operate this wood biomass project. They are also monitoring sound levels and have been in touch with the HSE who have visited the site.
More information and how to comment
Summarised from the HCC website