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Local campaigners are angry that a controversial planned anaerobic digester (AD) at a Herefordshire farm has been quietly given an environmental permit.

Whitwick Manor, near Newtown Cross midway between Bromyard, Ledbury and Hereford, was granted the permit by the Environment Agency (EA) in August – even though the scheme, intended to process thousands of tonnes of manure from local chicken farms, has yet to gain planning permission.

Indeed Herefordshire Council officers had said earlier this year that approval for the plant could not be granted due to its potential impact on local river systems, meaning the proposal has since had to be revised.

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Countryside charity CPRE Herefordshire, along with campaign groups Friends of the River Wye and Save the Wye, now say they are “deeply alarmed” by the EA’s move, which has only recently come to light as its “consultation” had simply amounted to an unannounced notice on its website.

By contrast, over 250 objections to the scheme, put forward by Nicholas Layton of the farm, have already been lodged on the council’s planning page.

Meanwhile the campaigners say their own measurements show the water in watercourses near the farm is among the most phosphate-polluted of the Wye catchment.

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They fear that rather than address the water pollution issue, the AD plant risks adding to it with potentially “catastrophic” spills.

CPRE Herefordshire director Andrew McRobb said: “Given the considerable concerns about the health of the Lugg catchment and the restrictions on the building industry, we are mystified as to how the permit was granted,” and blamed the goverment for the EA’s “bad practice”.

Friends of the River Wye chair Tom Tibbits added: “Given the history of AD plants and pollution incidents documented by the EA themselves, they of all people should have good reason to treat this proposal with exceptional caution.”

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An EA spokesperson said it had followed established procedure for consulting on the permit application.

The roles of the EA and of the council as local planning authority (LPA) “do not override one another” in such cases, they said.

“If the LPA has refused a planning application, any decision we make would not overrule that refusal.”