LAST September residents in the community of Coleford attended Forest Hills Golf Club to express their outrage to the proposed development of a 90 metre wind turbine adjacent to Poolway Farm.

As is the norm with this type of application it sneaked into our lives like a thief in the night, a wind turbine to be situated in a quiet peaceful quadrangle of residential development, 400 metres from a nursing home for the elderly and a hospice for the terminally ill.

From that moment on our quiet corner of England has been under threat! Whether you live within close proximity to the site or look towards the proposed development from Coleford town you cannot help visualising the site where this monstrosity will be planted and wonder how the prettiness of our landscape will be blighted by this modern day triffid.

This structure will be completely out of keeping with the surrounding area and detrimental to the visual amenity. We will suffer low-frequency noise and sleep disturbance; there may well be long term effects on our health and wellbeing, the devastation to wildlife the birds and bats it will kill.

We will have to bear painful witness to the industrialization of our beautiful landscape, the immediate devaluation of our properties but most importantly to suffer the possible effects of "wind turbine syndrome", while enormous fat wads of tax payers' money will line greedy landowners and developers pockets.

We also cannot ignore the long term financial devastation wind farms may have on our picturesque Forest of Dean. Tourism is the area's biggest revenue. This is a real threat, as big if not bigger than our battle against the sell-off of our woodlands – once our landscaped is ruined by these huge structures it is ruined for the next 25 years and beyond.

The Forest Hills Alliance and Dean Forest Crosswinds anti wind turbine groups battled in various ways to bring onside the decision-makers to refuse the application and in April of this year we had momentary success when the local planning authority refused this application for the erection of one turbine at Poolway Farm, influenced in no small measure by the local outcry against such adverse development.

However, last week I learned that the developer is appealing against the decision to refuse and the application has gone before the Planning Inspectorate for valication. Once again, as a community, we face as big a battle as the HOOF campaign to protect our heritage and landscape.

The developer boasted at the September meeting last year that he would see eight turbines on the land at Poolway and that turbines would stretch from Coleford to St. Briavels he was expressing a view that undoubtedly was already in the pipeline. St. Briavels is up and running, the thin end of the wedge. The bigger picture is that we could end up with miles and miles of these things totally overpowering and dominating our skyline.

Our corner of England faces wind farm industrial ruin, I hope the residents of Coleford will prepare for battle once again. Our voices against this catastrophe must be raised loudly and energetically. Once our landscape is ruined it is ruined and lost for many generations to come, we cannot let our children and future generations down, we cannot let this happen on our watch.

– Liz Porter.