Buckie community unites against biomass plant proposal they say will feel like 'living inside an industrial estate'
More than 100 people, almost the entire population of Rathven, have signed a petition objecting to a development on a site overlooking the village.
Residents have spoken out about how the plant would affect their quality of life.
It is developer Acorn Bioenergy's latest attempt at a digestion plant in Moray, after a site near Elgin was refused just last week.
The plans are currently in limbo after an objection from Historic Environment Scotland forced Acorn to move the site.
More than 100 residents in Rathven have signed the petition, which was accepted by Moray Council's development management and building standards manager Neal MacPherson and councillor Scott Lawrence this week.
The petition outlines local concerns of detrimental HGV traffic, smell and noise coming from the plant if it was to go ahead.
Local resident Scott Farquhar has lived in Rathven for 10 years and spent time gathering signatures for the petition.
'I'm not against the type of plant, It's a good idea,' he said. 'It's just not the right area for it.'
'It's not something the majority of the people in Rathven want in the area.'
He said the landscapes around Rathven haven't changed since he moved there and the village values its rural surroundings with an 'abundance' of local wildlife.
Mr Farquhar added: 'There's so much biodiversity in the area it would be a shame for that to be disturbed.'
'You just want to sit and enjoy your garden and your surroundings.'
Ryan Taylor has also lived in Rathven for 10 years and was the village representative handing over the petition over to Moray Council.
Mr Taylor said many of the road safety objections the village have are similar to the recently refused Elgin proposal, and says Acorn have again chosen the wrong site.
'The risks are greater down here because of the already high volume of HGVs,' he said.
'The fact we've had an accident on that road exactly adjacent to the new site just highlights it is a dangerous stretch of road.'
A transport assessment from Acorn for the previous site entrance concluded there was enough capacity on March Road for the site and 'will not result in any operational or safety issues.'
Mr Taylor added the scale of the proposal will feel like 'living inside an industrial estate.'
He said his family would consider moving away from Rathven if the development was to go ahead.
Doug Milton, a local resident in Rathven, said there is nothing Acorn could do to convince him to support the development.
Mr Milton said: 'The actual concept of it is a very good thing, however it's in the wrong place. It's too near houses.
'Visually, I'll see it from across the road but it's the smells that will affect me in my house.'
The plant intends to use 'locally grown and sourced' crops and manure as its primary feedstock for the plant, which produces biomethane and can be used as a heat source or fuel.
Distillery draff and pot ale can be added as part of the process, which all breaks down into biogas and can be refined.
Mr Milton estimates there will be 10,000 tonnes of manure delivered each year to the plant.
'That's colossal,' Mr Milton added. 'At some stage that's got to be exposed and the smell has got to come out.'
The Rathven plant's original proposal hit a roadblock when Historic Environment Scotland took issue with the site's proximity to a nearby cairn.
This forced the developer to look elsewhere in the field and have indicated they are looking at a site closer to Rathven.
The Buckie plans are one of three projects Acorn has been working on across Scotland.
As well as the recently refused plant in Longmorn near Elgin, Acorn also has an ongoing appeal with the Scottish Government for another refused plant at Balintore in Easter Ross.
Acorn Bioenergy have been contacted for an update on the Rathven plans.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
STV News
4 days ago
- STV News
Mothballed school to close permanently over falling pupil numbers
A school in Moray is to close for good after pupil numbers fell below the minimum threshold for several years in a row. Crossroads Primary School near Keith, which was mothballed in January 2023 after pupil numbers fell to ten, is to close permanently. The pupil roll remained 'well below' the council's minimum threshold of 15 for successive years with a decision made at full council to proceed with complete closure. Scottish Ministers said the council had fulfilled its obligations under the Schools (Consultation) (Scotland) Act 2010. Teaching at the school has ended with immediate effect, and the catchment area will be permanently reassigned to Keith and Rothiemay Primary Schools. Pupils from the Grange area have been attending other schools for a number of years, and their existing arrangements will remain unchanged by the closure. The local authority has said it will work with the community to consider potential future uses for the school building and grounds. Leader of Moray Council, Cllr Kathleen Robertson, who also chairs the Education, Children's and Leisure Services Committee, said: 'This decision has been taken with the best interests of pupils and the wider community in mind. 'With the school having been mothballed for over two years and no significant increase in the pupil roll, it's important to provide clarity for families and ensure continuity of education in nearby schools. 'We're committed to working closely with the local community to explore meaningful and sustainable future uses for the Crossroads school site.' The ministerial decision letter has been published on the Scottish Government website. Get all the latest news from around the country Follow STV News Scan the QR code on your mobile device for all the latest news from around the country
New Statesman
09-07-2025
- New Statesman
On freedom vs motherhood
In 2017, the journalist Angela Levin wrote a piece for the Daily Mail that prompted an outpouring from readers. Billed as a 'taboo-breaking admission', it was titled 'My mother was a cruel and horrid woman' and described a lonely childhood marked by demeaning comments and acts of spite. When Levin told her mother that she was pregnant she was told: 'I hope the baby is like you. Then you'll appreciate what I had to put up with.' In the weeks following the article's publication, scores of readers wrote in with accounts of their own painful experiences. Many were women in their sixties and seventies sharing for the first time their true feelings about their mothers. In a feature reflecting on this correspondence, a Cambridge psychologist, Terri Apter, noted that many of the writers were the children of mothers 'who really didn't see themselves as having a choice in the matter'. This was a generation for whom marriage and children were simply assumed. Had they been able to choose, Apter suggested, they might have 'spared their children a life of suffering'. I found these articles coming to mind while reading Childless by Choice: The Meaning and Legacy of a Childfree Life, a compelling memoir in which Helen Taylor, now in her seventies, describes her life without children, one filled with teaching, writing, travel, friendship and love. While Taylor's own mother – to whose memory the book is dedicated – was not unkind, she was, Taylor recalls, 'an intelligent but sad and bitter woman' who 'always seemed exhausted'. Taylor enjoyed a different path, fulfilling her academic potential through higher education, setting up the first women's studies course at Bristol Polytechnic and winding up as head of English at Exeter. She threw herself into the Women's Liberation Movement in the 1970s and found an ideal partner who shared her desire to remain childless. She describes a rich life, one that was partly a reaction to her own mother's predicament. From childhood, Taylor was regularly reminded that children were 'a burden and a problem, and if I were wise, I would never have any'. Life without children, her mother's comments suggested, would be 'blissfully unproblematic'. Taylor's conversations with other childless women lead her to the conclusion that this experience is not unusual. She uncovers 'a childhood pattern of unhappiness, maternal reluctance or neglect, which led them early on to resolve never to have children of their own'. Taylor is of the baby-boomer cohort, and acutely aware that she belongs to the first generation able to opt for a life without children thanks to the introduction of the contraceptive pill to the NHS in 1961 and the liberalisation of abortion laws in 1967. But this demographic was more likely to have children, and earlier in life, than any other since 1920. More than half of women born in 1946 had a child before the age of 24. Fewer than one in ten had no children at all. And so, at a time when it was easier than ever not to have children, Taylor found herself more in the minority than the generation that preceded hers. Despite the growing prevalence of childless (or child-free) women – the Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, is the latest figure to express alarm about the perilously low birth rate – the stigma endures. There is still, Taylor notes, a tendency to regard childless women (at least those unable to boast of lucrative careers, strong relationships and comfortable homes) as 'unnatural, freakish, pitiable or child-hating'. And childless writers hit back with defiance: 'The conventional wisdom is that I must be broken by my barrenness, executing a crazed tarantella to the dying beat of my biological clock,' wrote Hannah Betts in the Times last year. Mothers who vaunt their choice are 'forever lamenting' their lives, she observed. 'Call me a spoilt bitch, but I am not jumping at the opportunity to be a sleepless, sexless, career-frustrated drone.' On social media, young women can be found documenting the joys of a child-free life. 'Here's what your Saturday morning looks like when you're single at 29 and you don't have a kid running around the house,' one American podcaster, Julia Mazur, announced in a viral TikTok post a couple of years ago. Beginning with a hungover lie-in, the clip documents a day spent learning how to make shakshuka and watching TV. The fact that Mazur became the victim of abusive comments (she told Rolling Stone that she had been told she deserved to die alone and should kill herself) is a reminder that a child-free life attracts active hostility, not just pity and condescension. Picking up Taylor's book, I had expected to encounter a lively defence of the child-free life – an encomium to the joys of freedom from the constraints of motherhood. I recalled the Sex and the City boxsets I had blitzed my way through in the early 2000s, and the list Carrie Bradshaw fired off when considering the advantages of childless life with a glamorous Russian ('Him, sex and travel. Comfort, love and extraordinary adventures'). I was unprepared for the more nuanced, searching and occasionally melancholic tone of Childless by Choice. 'My tale is not tragic – though it contains bewilderment, regret and sorrows, as well as happiness and fulfilment,' Taylor writes in the preface. 'There are doubts and ambivalences I have never really confronted, and for the sake of younger women and my contemporaries who share such feelings, I'm going to try to unpack them.' Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe What follows is a candid probe into these ambivalences. At moments, doubt comes close to regret, but clarification is usually added. Taylor first felt 'twinges' of it in her fifties, while helping to care for her disabled mother and wondering who might eventually do the same for her. While observing families on the beach on holiday in Corsica she found herself surprised to sense what she might have missed. This was not, she stresses, a case of being an 'emotional wreck', but of becoming aware 'of the limitations of my choice, and the narrow range of my human interactions'. As she looks back on decades in which she had scant contact with the daily lives of children, a recurring theme emerges: that to remain childless is to exist on the fringe, 'an observer of others' family lives'. At times this idea is delivered as a warning. If you are not a parent, Taylor suggests, 'you will be outside (or can opt out of) most of those networks that are at the heart of our family-oriented society'. The 'weighty task of bringing new life into the world' is, she contends 'the most important anyone takes on'. The childless are 'out of the adult part of the loop'. She is fascinated by the examples of childless writers who used 'babyish' language with their partners and writes of other childless women who recognise her feeling of having 'not really grown up'. 'A busy work life is no permanent substitute for family or community, especially as it winds down into retirement,' she cautions at one point. I found Taylor's honesty impressive, but would hesitate before giving the book to a childless friend. First, I suspect that some of the more aggressive pro-natalists would leap on certain passages as confirmation of their warnings about remaining child-free. The reaction to Mazur's harmless TikTok and JD Vance's dismissal of 'childless cat ladies' are examples of the vindictiveness within this movement. Those getting caught in the crossfire include those who have lost babies, struggled with fertility or finding a partner – all scenarios that Taylor acknowledges. Second, some of her confessions can be morbid. Reflecting on the suicide of another female academic, she wonders about her own old age, and envies those who die surrounded by children and grandchildren. Within the melancholy, I also came to find her candour, and her ability to sit with ambivalence and doubt, extremely appealing. It's reflected in her willingness to end sections without a neat resolution, to leave us with troubling questions for which she refuses to provide a pat answer. I was also impressed by her readiness to confess to past failings or misunderstandings. She admits to having found children 'rather terrifying', unsure of how to interact with them, and certain that they find her 'either boring or a little frightening'. Despite having gained an unexpected stepson later in life and expressing regret for having failed to get to know better the children of her peers, you get the sense that children will always remain a slightly mysterious, difficult 'other' to Taylor. There are stories of friendships strained by the different paths taken, of distance growing as the years pass by. At times, I found myself wanting to appeal against some of her harsher self-judgements. On a WhatsApp group with two female friends, she confesses to feeling on occasion like 'a spectre at the feast, writing rather solemnly about my adult-focused daily routine and pleasures in a way that lacks the special joy, humour and intimacy of relations with the very young'. Her descriptions of the road not taken are nonetheless quietly amusing in their honesty, and there are moments when the joys of her child-free life come into view, including a 'wonderful' Christmas spent with her husband having a picnic of wine and chocolate on the riverbank. Ambivalence is not limited to the childless, she notes – friends with children tell her they have conflicted feelings about their own choices, and some jealousy towards her child-free state. Caution about simplistic paeans to the child-free life is balanced by an unapologetic affirmation that 'your legacy is your own life'. As a mother of two small children, I finished the book grateful for Taylor's empathy for women across the divide. 'I may find all your family photos a bit overwhelming, but I'll help you upstairs with the baby buggy, babysit for you and also argue on your behalf with politicians,' she writes touchingly in her conclusion. Bearing in mind her observation that 'one can be a mother without having children', I detected something quite maternal about her desire to help young women 'think very hard before deciding against motherhood' and to offer her own life experiences as material to be weighed in the balance – despite knowing that this may be considered 'impertinent'. Taylor is experienced, wise and mature, yet still open to seeking out further insight into her own choices and those of others. I was struck by her decision to quote from the cartoonist Tim Kreider, who has suggested that the childless constitute 'a kind of existential vanguard, forced by our own choices to face the naked question of existence with few illusions, or at least fewer consolations… forced to prove to ourselves anew every day that extinction does not negate meaning'. Taylor exemplifies this sort of forensic, fearless thinking, offered in a spirit of generosity to future generations. Childless by Choice: The Meaning and Legacy of a Childfree Life Helen Taylor Whitefox, 256pp, £16.99 [See also: Oasis are the greatest Irish band of all time] Related
South Wales Guardian
04-07-2025
- South Wales Guardian
River Tywi, Teifi and Cleddau phosphorus pollution tackled
A new website has been launched to highlight collaborative efforts across west Wales to restore the health of its rivers, focusing on the Tywi, Teifi, and Cleddau catchments. The site, details the work of the West Wales Nutrient Management Boards (NMBs), which aim to tackle phosphorus pollution in these Special Areas of Conservation. Gail Pearce-Taylor, programme manager for the Tywi, Teifi, and Cleddau NMBs, said: "This website is our way of sharing everything we've learned so far and bringing people with us as we build nutrient management plans for the future. "The challenge of phosphorus pollution can only be tackled by working together – and that's what makes these boards so special." The boards are funded by the Welsh Government and led by local authorities in Ceredigion, Carmarthenshire, and Pembrokeshire. They bring together public bodies, utilities, environmental groups, and local communities to develop long-term water quality solutions that support sustainable development. The new website offers GIS-mapped data, non-technical summaries, resources for landowners and developers, and findings from citizen science projects. It also provides information on joining stakeholder groups or taking part in consultations. The chairs of the three river boards, Cllr Clive Davies of Ceredigion (Teifi), Cllr Carys Jones of Carmarthenshire (Tywi), and Cllr Jacob Williams of Pembrokeshire (Cleddau), issued a joint statement. They said: "The health of our rivers underpins everything – our wildlife, our economy, and our communities. "It's vital that we take a proactive and collaborative approach. "This new website gives people the tools and knowledge to be part of the solution." The boards will be present at several events over the summer, including the Tywi River Festival on July 19, the Royal Welsh Show on July 21, and the Pembrokeshire County Show (FUW Stand) on August 20 and 21. Organisers are keen to raise awareness of the boards' work and encourage farmers, landowners, developers, and young people to engage with the site, learn about the issues, and share feedback.
