ONCE more, I must rise, compelled by conscience, driven by duty, to defend the noble river Wye, now suffocating beneath a tide of phosphates from our county’s agricultural excesses (online: Herefordshire farm fights on to permit chicken-poo AD plant, October 14).

This once-crystal artery, the lifeblood of Herefordshire, has been reduced to little more than a sacrificial offering on the altar of industrial-scale poultry farming. But this indignity, it seems, is not enough. A new horror looms on the horizon: an anaerobic digestion facility brazenly set to process 100,000 metric tons of chicken waste each year, converting it into gas.

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Though once mercifully delayed, the application has resurfaced, cloaked in amendments but no less insidious. And I ask, with righteous indignation: what ghastly remnants will be left behind once the gas is siphoned off ?

As if this weren’t enough to darken our spirits, must we also endure endless numbers of lorries, rumbling day and night across Herefordshire’s famously cratered roads laden with muck?

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Our pockmarked highways, already on the brink, will surely crumble under the strain.

In our relentless quest to “grow” more protein, are we not sacrificing our rivers, roads, and heritage? Is this truly progress, or merely the next pothole on the road to ruin?

PHIL ROWNTREE

Marden