| Wind Watch is a registered educational charity, founded in 2005. |
Offshore wind farm site “littered with unexploded bombs”
Credit: By Diana Henderson, Daily Echo, www.bournemouthecho.co.uk 30 November 2010 ~~
Translate: FROM English | TO English
Translate: FROM English | TO English
Unexploded wartime bombs litter the seabed off the Dorset coast, which could host an offshore windfarm.
This was a surprise finding of a survey into the 280 sq km of sea, said Chris Sherrington, project director of Eneco, which aims to build a £3 billion offshore windfarm from Purbeck to the Needles on the Isle of Wight.
“There’s quite a lot out there,” he told Poole Harbour Commissioners annual open evening. A specialist survey undertaken during the summer had revealed large numbers of unexploded ordnance on the seabed.
The wind project would have between 180 and 300 wind turbines, depending on their size and the nearest part of the zone to the coast would be eight miles away, he said.
Turbines would be in 30-50 metres of water and he said the survey aimed to ensure there was no ordnance where they intended to drill.
“There is quite a lot of potential ordnance from World War I and World War II out there,” he said.
Mines and wartime bombs are occasionally pulled up with the catch in fishermen’s nets and have to be safely exploded by service bomb disposal units.
Robert Key, former MP for Salisbury who retired at the April general election, narrowly escaped being blown up by a wartime mine on Swanage beach in 1955, which killed five children.
As an MP he discovered that 58 out of 117 mines laid were still unaccounted for, despite the beach being cleared three times and it was thought the mine that exploded had been washed ashore in a gale.
Mr Sherrington said they hoped to go to the planning authorities for the windfarm at the end of 2012 and if successful construction could start in 2014.
This article is the work of the source indicated. Any opinions expressed in it are not necessarily those of National Wind Watch.
The copyright of this article resides with the author or publisher indicated. As part of its noncommercial educational effort to present the environmental, social, scientific, and economic issues of large-scale wind power development to a global audience seeking such information, National Wind Watch endeavors to observe “fair use” as provided for in section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law and similar “fair dealing” provisions of the copyright laws of other nations. Send requests to excerpt, general inquiries, and comments via e-mail.
| Wind Watch relies entirely on User Funding |
 (via Stripe) |
 (via Paypal) |
Share:
[ Short URL: https://wind-watch.org/news/?p=44118 ]
