RATTs claim thousands of letters supporting biomass protest, 23 Jan 2011

RATTs campaigners in City Square at the weekend

Anti-biomass protesters RATTs (Residents Against Tay Turbines) have spent the last few weeks gathering support for their campaign and said they were "very pleased" at the response from local people.

RATTs member Bob Adam said that each of the letters printed by his group had to be individually signed and dated before counting as an objection.
He said, "At the moment, we expect to have well over 3000 and they will be handed in to the Scottish Government's energy consents and deployment unit in Glasgow on Thursday.

"We believe there will be many more that people have downloaded from our website and will be submitting themselves in protest at the biomass plant."
As well as calling on householders living near the Stannergate site earmarked for the proposed energy plant, RATTs also spent the weekend in the City Square encouraging people to register their opposition.

Bob said that although there were a few people from Arbroath, Brechin and Fife who were keen to sign an objection letter, most people who pledged their support were from Dundee.

"I'd say the vast majority of the objection letters we'll be submitting are from the Dundee area," said Bob. "We are very pleased with the support we have had, although a lot of people didn't know anything about it, which speaks volumes for the consultation process carried out by Forth Energy.

"Of all the people we approached in the City Square there was just a handful who supported the biomass plant.

'Big effort'

"We also had a lot of people thinking it was a 'done deal' and there's not much we can do about it but if we have enough people objecting then maybe we can.
"We made a big effort to let as many people as possible know what Forth Energy was hoping to build at the waterfront and we're very pleased with the response we've had."

Plans for the biomass development went on display last month and can still be viewed at Tayside House until Friday -- the deadline for public comments on the proposal.

Bob said his group's efforts to draw attention to what they see as the negative aspects of the proposed development seemed to have gathered momentum as the objection deadline approached.

He added, "We set up a website in opposition to the biomass plant but it crashed because of the number of hits we've been getting.
"We had to increase the bandwidth to cope with the amount of people who were visiting it and downloading the objection letter."

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