DEVELOPERS behind proposals for a £5 million renewable energy plant on a greenfield site have countered claims that it will create a blot on the landscape.

The joint Websters Farms and JFS & Associates scheme would see an anaerobic digestion facility generating less than one megawatt of energy from manure at Arbour Hill, near Patrick Brompton, in Lower Wensleydale, to sell to the National Grid.

Planning consultant Steve Barker said the scale and many of the details about the scheme had yet to be decided, but opposition group Arbour Hill Against Anaerobic Digester claims a 36,000-tonne capacity digester was being lined up for the site.

Campaigners say the manure would be brought to the site from six Websters Farms locations stretching from West Tanfield, near Ripon, to East Appleton, near Catterick, meaning about 1,000 tankers and 1,700 tractors with trailer trips through the nearby villages annually.

The group, which has been set up to oppose an impending planning application to Richmondshire District Council, said some residents were shocked after learning about the scheme at a public consultation event hosted by Patrick Brompton Parish Council in March.

The group's chairman, Karl Brown, said it was understood the site would straddle a public footpath and feature two 16m-high tanks, open lagoons holding liquid waste, storage sheds, heat venting and burn off flues and possibly a 1,000-plus herd of cattle.

Mr Brown, whose family has recently invested £500,000 in creating holiday accomodation and revamping a Georgian model farm near the proposed digester site, said he feared the scheme could ruin his business and lower the value of property in the area.

He said: "This would be an industrial-scale development in a totally unsuitable location."

Mr Barker said the campaigners' claims about the scheme creating extra traffic were ill-conceived as the farms' manure was already being moved around the road network, that the site would be well screened and the project would reduce manure odours rather than increase them.

He pointed towards another anaerobic digester scheme at Newby Wiske, near Northallerton, that generated controversy after it was unveiled and said residents' concerns there had proved to be unfounded.

Mr Barker said: "The Arbour Hill scheme is at the very small end of the anaerobic digestion spectrum, is very green and very environmentally-friendly.

"We will site the tanks in the least obtrusive place within our ownership and control.

"There is an issue that we need to improve the track to Arbour Hill, as it would benefit from passing places."