Pipeline plan dealt a blow (From Hereford Times)

Pipeline plan dealt a blow

9:06am Friday 1st September 2006 in News

THE future for one of Britain's biggest engineering projects of recent years - the proposed 186km natural gas pipeline between Milford Haven and Gloucestershire - has been pitched into limbo by Herefordshire planners.

National Grid is said to be looking at its options this week after Herefordshire Council's main planning committee rejected the building of a crucial compressor station along the route at Peterstow, near Ross-on-Wye.

Members said their responsibilities to the local community outweighed any national interest in the pipeline. Instead, they wanted more exploration of what could be done at another site nearby that National Grid had already dismissed as too technically demanding and posing a safety risk.

Plans for the pipeline, first revealed by the Hereford Times last September, have proved controversial in the parts of the country it would cross.

National Grid says the pipeline is vital to meeting soaring demand for gas. Gas from abroad would be landed at Milford Haven and pumped into existing pipeline networks.

The new compressor station at Peterstow, close to a similar, smaller facility already there, was needed to control and regulate gas flows into the existing grid at the most practical point.

As proposed, the pipeline would cross into Herefordshire through the Brecon Beacons and run beneath farmland along the Golden Valley, across the Wye Valley and South Herefordshire to Tirley, Gloucestershire.

The vote on Friday was the first time that a council along the route had formally said no. A meeting of the southern area planning sub-committee last month voted to refuse the application, despite acknowledging its importance.

That left the final decision to the main planning committee. At both meetings members were told by planning officers to give the station the go-ahead. But each committee found a common cause in the impact it believed the station would have on its surrounds and future neighbours.

Councillor Jenny Hyde slammed National Grid for the "cavalier way" in which she claimed work had already started on the preferred site.

The chosen site was too intrusive when a better alternative was just another few hundred yards away, said Councillor Godfrey Davis.

Councillor David Taylor said he was surprised that Whitchurch Fire Station, the nearest to the proposed compressor station, had not been consulted about the project.

Councillor Terry James wanted more information on safety and security at a site he said was certain to be a terrorist target.

But Councillor Bob Matthews warned the council would have difficulty defending a refusal on appeal and Councillor Barrie Ashton said the station's rejection would only delay the inevitable.

"The station will be a blot wherever it is built. I sympathise with those who will lose views, but we have no right to views," he said.

Caroline Davidson said National Grid was disappointed by the decision and was looking at other options to meet a commitment to have the pipeline built within the next two years. The Peterstow station was still seen as a very necessary part of that plan, she said.