Aberdeenshire Farmer Finds Pollution Balloon
One of the most demonstrative events of the Just Say No To Lignite Campaign was its "Buy a Balloon Campaign" in which helium filled balloons were released into the sky from Ballymoney to demonstarte how far emissions from a lignite fuelled power station could travel.
Press Release
It's a long way from Aberdeenshire to Ballymoney in the North of Ireland. 230 miles to be exact. This is how far a pollution tracking balloon travelled before it was found by farmer Gordon Spence on Auchencreive Farm, Methlick, near Ellon.
Ballymoney is a small town near the North Coast of Ireland. Recently, Australian entrepreneurs lodged a planning application to build a massive lignite mine and power station on its doorstep. Known as the dirtiest fossil fuel in the world, burning lignite - or brown coal - creates CO2 emissions which are significantly more damaging to the ozone layer and to human health than any other form of coal.
The mine would cover an area the size of 4000 football pitches put together, and the power station would operate for at least 30 years. Ballymoney sits in a rural landscape which adjoins a World Heritage coastline. The area is famous for its natural beauty. As farmer John Chestnutt explains "We face our land and communities being changed from some of the finest green belt countryside in the land to a heavy industrial zone overnight. It is hard to even take it all in".
As soon as the Australian company announced its plans, local residents in and around Ballymoney launched a campaign to fight the planning application. In the spring of this year, the campaigners delivered 37000 letters of objection to the planners in Belfast. Letters had come in from all over the world with most of them from people living all over Ireland. It was the largest objection to a planning application ever lodged in Northern Ireland.
In the summer, the campaigners launched their "Buy a Balloon Campaign". People donated £ 1 to the campaign cause and in return had a balloon released into the sky. The balloons were tagged and anyone finding them was asked to return them to the campaign offices. "These balloons and tags were bio-degradeable", explains campaigner and farmer Bob Richmond "so we were able to make sure they had little or no long-term impact on the environment. But we could track them to see where pollution would land, and how far it would travel".
Gordon Spence, left, finder of the pollution balloon which travelled furthest with Inez and Bob Richmond from the Just Say no To Lignite Campaign
The balloon which Gordon Spence found was the winning entry, having travelled 230 miles. Other balloons were found as far North as Lewis, and as far South as Dublin.
"One of the balloons reached Rannoch in Perthshire in an afternoon" says Bob "We released it on a Saturday afternoon at the Ballymoney Summer Show, and we were contacted by a lady in Rannoch to say she had found it that same evening. It had travelled more than 150 miles in a few hours". Another balloon, picked up in the Moorfoot Hills in the Scottish Borders, was found by a local gamekeeper who was originally from Ballymoney.
The balloons have given the campaigners useful information on how far pollution could be expected to travel from the power station if it is built. Retired teacher John Leitch, who has carried out research for the campaign group, explains that they have had a lot of telephone calls from Scottish farmers, worried about the effects of the pollution on their dairy herds and pastures. "The farmers who were ringing us were from just over the water, around Dumfries and Galloway. But judging from where the balloons have landed, it looks as if this pollution is going to travel a lot further than that. Most of the island of Ireland could be affected by it as well as large parts of Scotland. Needless to say, the campaign is going to fight tooth and nail to get this scheme stopped. It would make a lot of money for Australian entrepreneurs, but at what cost to all of us people who live in a 250 mile radius from Ballymoney?"