DURHAM Tees Valley Airport (DTVA) was last night at the centre of a bizarre £700,000 row over a green power plan for Middlesbrough FC's stadium.

The airport is seeking payments in the region of £700,000 to update its air traffic control system before it lifts objections to a wind turbine that is due to power the 34,000-seat stadium.

Boro officials are aiming to make the Riverside Stadium the UK's first major sports venue to become self-sustainable for electricity use - allowing the club to invest more money in the team.

But DTVA has claimed radar returns from the turbine would compromise passenger safety and planes may need to be re-routed if the developer - Empowering Wind - doesn't pay towards updating its air traffic control system.

The airport is pressing Middlesbrough Council to retain a condition in the planning permission for the 136m (446ft) turbine in the stadium's overflow car park, which stipulates the effects on the radar must be alleviated.

But the North Yorkshire developer has applied to have the condition lifted on the grounds that the turbine poses no problem.

The airport's charges are understood to include annual payments of around £30,000 over the 20-year life of the turbine - set to be completed in February - to run an updated radar system.

Details of the charges emerged weeks after aviation minister Robert Goodwill demanded answers from DTVA over its agreement to drop safety-related objections to wind turbine schemes in North Yorkshire following a £10,000 deal with the developer.

Empowering Wind chief executive Paul Millinder said he was stunned by the airport's proposed charges and refused to pay after studies concluded the single turbine would have "no noticeable impact on air traffic control operations".

A 2008 report found the wind turbine would produce clutter [unwanted signals on the radar screen] occupying less than 0.001 per cent of the screen.

In a report published earlier this month, Doug Maclean, a former National Air Traffic Service expert on the operational effects of wind turbines on radar displays, said he had "no hesitation" in recommending the planning condition be axed.

He said: "It is impossible to imagine the Riverside turbine clutter as continuing to represent a real aircraft that DTVA do not know about or control.

"In my very experienced view of radar operations and particularly radar operations around clutter, I believe there are no safety implications for the full operation of the Riverside wind turbine."

He said a report commissioned by DTVA stating the Civil Aviation Authority directs air traffic controllers to avoid radar clutter by five miles was incorrect and that trains or vehicles on high ground near the airport would also produce the unwanted signals.

Mr Maclean said: "Roads like the A66 will carry high-sided vehicles which will present as moving targets and form radar clutter on some occasions."

He said if the erroneous five-mile rule was applied to any spurious radar returns from road traffic on the A66 then DTVA would be unable to operate in the airspace to the north of the airport.

Mr Millinder said the airport's owners Peel Group, which also develops onshore wind projects, had not specified how the radar returns would be degraded to support the planning condition, which has set back the scheme by 16 months.

He said: "When DTVA asked me to enter into a non-conclusive agreement that would cost in excess of £690,000 I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

"If it can be proven that my turbine will present any air safety issue I will be the first to do something about it."

Mr Millinder added he had been angered by the council delaying a decision over whether to revoke the condition and that he was in talks over suing the authority for losses.

A DTVA spokesman refused to reveal to The Northern Echo how much it was proposing Empowering Wind paid it for the mitigation measures or if its proposed charges were a fair reflection of the turbine’s disturbance to the airport’s radar returns.

The airport also declined to answer if it was likely, over a period of a few minutes, that an air traffic controller could interpret radar clutter from a single turbine as an aircraft or why its air traffic control manager had not written its objection.

It said the siting of the turbine was "much more critical to airport operations than many of the operational turbines in the area".

The spokesman said: "It is in critical airspace on the approach to our runway - just under two nautical miles from the runway centreline where aircraft normally begin their descent to the runway, approximately seven nautical miles from touchdown.

"The rotation of the turbine blades - each as large as the size of commercial aircraft which operate from the airport - means that the airport radar would display them as unidentified returns akin to an unknown aircraft.

"Without proper mitigation procedures the operation of this turbine would in certain conditions result in controllers having to re-route aircraft off the approach to the runway or off agreed flight paths, impacting on both flight operations and air traffic safety."

The council's planning committee will consider the application on December 19.