Campaigners were out on the streets of Elgin at the weekend gathering renewed support for their bid to have plans for a new windfarm scrapped.
It is the second time that the Save the Brown Muir campaign group have been called into action, their first efforts to halt the windfarm plans resulting in unanimous rejection of the bid by Moray Council planning committee members in 2012.
Then Edinburgh-based developers Vento Ludens had bid for a 19-turbine project on the hill to the south of Elgin – but faced over 2200 objections, a record for any such application in Scotland.
Now the company have renewed their bid with a reduced 12-turbine plan that they say addresses all the previous objections to their plans, with head of development for the company, Mike Kelly, saying: “We went back to the drawing board and redesigned the wind farm, taking on board the comments made during the previous application.
“To address the comments we removed the most prominent turbines from the ridge at Brown Muir and moved others so the wind farm sits closer to the south east boundary of the site.
“This led to a significant reduction of the scheme from 19 to 12 turbines.”
However, campaigners have renewed their protests over the plans and managed to gather support with 450 people so far signing a petition against the windfarm.
Now they insist that by the time the application is considered on December 18 a similar level of opposition will have been gathered to oppose it, with members of the group saying they had managed to gather the 450 signatures in just a few hours at the weekend.
One resident claimed that at 450feet high the planned turbines would each be the “size of a jumbo jet” and clearly visible from residents in Elgin, Lhanbryde, Lossiemouth and Garmouth.
However, last week members of the Lossiemouth Community Council declined to raise any objections to the new plans, a spokesman saying that they did not consider the proposals would have a considerable visual impact from the town.