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Wake-boarding plan sparks wildlife worries
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| Keynes Country Park |
PLANS for a cable-wake board ride at Keynes Country Park have triggered fears that an internationally important wildlife habitat will gradually be turned into an adrenaline sports venue.
Watermark Investments has applied to Cotswold District Council for permission to site the ride on lake 31, which is listed in the local plan as part of the water park's quiet zone.
It is hugely popular with locals who are angry that they have not been consulted and who now fear they could lose the access they have had for the past 40 years to the footpaths around it.
The executive of the Joint Water Park Committee questioned the terms of Watermark's lease on the country park at a special meeting on Monday.
It will tell CDC that if the application does go ahead there must be no impact on the ecology and no interference to existing public rights of way or established permissive routes within the park.
Oaksey parish councillor Marianne Taylor-Seymour fumed: "It is another piece of techno rubbish detritus on our landscape."
CDC Cllr Clive Bennett added: "Everybody feels this should not go ahead. But the big problem is planning reasons for refusal.
Roger Sleeman said an ecological statement accompanying the application, which said wildlife would be monitored for three years and mitigation measures installed if needed, was the wrong way round.
Although a cable-boarding facility is already operating on lake 11, it is understood this will go if the new plans are successful.
Local resident Esmond Jenkins is fighting the plan. He told the Standard campaigners were not opposed to the concept of the cable-board itself. "It is the fact that it is visually intrusive and the impact on what is a wildlife habitat that is recognised as being of local, national and European importance.
"A lot of voluntary effort has gone into getting these lakes into the condition that they are in. The cable-ski does no harm where it is.
"We agree it is not noisy, we agree that probably it is not going to have much impact on traffic. But what we are saying is however they try to package it there is only one justification. That is Watermark have paid a lot of money for the lease on Keynes Country Park and they have to turn a profit.
"The other issue is that there has been no consultation. It has almost been presented as a fait accompli."
What are your throughts on this matter?
9:50am Wednesday 14th May 2008
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