Farming Today

Revised plans imminent

It appears Nocton Dairies are almost in a position to submit their revised plans - now expected to be within the next 2 - 4 weeks.

According to this report, a digester will take account of the many concerns expressed from local people over slurry spreading. The digester will remove 90% of smell from the manure, leaving a 'digestate' that can be spread on the land.

The digester will also turn methane into renewable electricity that will be used to power the dairy and be exported for 'local homes'.

Inevitably there will be more traffic created, but the consortium will be routing lorries to make sure they don't go through local villages 'unneccessarily'.

More space will be created within the buildings and 'outdoor paddocks' will be created, so that all cows will have access to outdoor space. There is still a view that there is no 'nutritional benefit' for the cows to go outside the buildings though.

Whilst no specific revised figures were given for the number of cows involved, the application will be going in for less than 8,100 according to the report.

There was no mention of capacity of lagoons for emergency storage of slurry, or mitigation of risk to our local aquifer if an accidental spillage were to happen.

So there we are, more drip-feeding of information using media outlets. Whether the revised plans go far enough to satisfy concerns about this development still remains to be seen.

You can listen to the report here, broadcast this morning on the Farming Today programme: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00vrv9l

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