Windfarm mix-up over Cemex quarry application

WHEN is a windfarm not a windfarm? When it’s a quarry on the outskirts of Lanark.

What sounds like a misfired joke out of a Christnas cracker isn’t causing much laughter among members of the Save Our Landscape (SOL) pressure group, fighting plans by Cemex to extend its Hyndford Quarry into the conservation Buffer Zone around New Lanark.

That’s because the mix-up over building a wind turbine and carrying out quarrying appears in what should be a deadly serious and accurate document, Cemex’s formal planning permission application to South Lanarkshire Council to carry out the highly controversial opencast mining operation.

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The error is made repeatedly in the application document, quickly spotted by SOL members as they went through it with a fine tooth comb to find any flaws which they could exploit in their fight to block the scheme they claim would ruin forever the beautiful countryside between the old and New Lanarks.

SOL chairman Mark Stephens explained: “When we examined the planning application, I was amazed to find the proposed quarry described as being a ‘wind turbine’– not once, but TWICE.”