Digestate lagoon ‘was never approved’ but can stay anyway

An open “anaerobic digestate” lagoon the size of an Olympic swimming pool at an elevated Herefordshire spot has been permitted, despite local concerns it could leak into sensitive local waterways.

Herefordshire Council said that a retrospective planning application made three years ago for the 2,500-square-metre capacity lagoon, at Great Treaddow Farm, south of St Owen’s Cross and west of Ross-on-Wye, had now been formally withdrawn by the applicant, farming firm FM Green.

At the time, the 500-member Wye Salmon Association said it “objected strongly” to its approval given what it claimed was the threat it posed to the nearby Garren and Gamber brooks, tributaries of the river Wye.

These “should be viable spawning grounds for salmon but are not”, largely due, they said, to pollution from farms. And liquid digestate “poses an extremely high environmental risk” to watercourses and even to ground water, they claimed.

Llangarron Parish Council also objected, saying there was “no evidence to prove the efficacy” of the lagoon, which “is not covered or bunded and for this reason does not follow best practice”. There were ten further individual objections.

But while the application remained undetermined by council planners, in the meantime the farm made a separate application last summer for a lawful development certificate, saying that as the lagoon had been installed in May 2020, more than four years had since passed making it immune from planning enforcement.

This too raised concerns, with nearby resident Jennifer Clark saying she was “appalled” that the council’s failure to determine the earlier, retrospective application in good time “has now given the applicants the opportunity to apply for a lawful development certificate”.

Explaining the decision to grant this last September, planning officer Rebecca Jenman said at the time: “Whilst recognising the concerns raised by the objector, these are not material to this type of application and there is no evidence to contradict the applicant’s claim.”

FM Green’s Ditton Farm, which describes itself as “a family-run Herefordshire farm pioneering regenerative agriculture”, was asked whether the lagoon remains in use at the neighbouring farm.