Views ignored

Sir, The Forestry Commission (FC) held a drop-in meeting at Machrie Hall last week and greatly disappointed most who attended.

In advance of this meeting, Dr David Price of Machrie prepared and presented a paper to the FC in which he addressed the six points that the FC has set out justifying its proposal. In answer to each point, Dr Price strongly questioned the FC approach but the FC representative at the meeting would not engage on these valid points.

To propose a log yard on the landward side of the coastal road means that to load a 750-ton vessel per week means a minimum of 150 transporter trips across the road each way – in a 10-hour load period suggests a crossing every two minutes. This is simply not feasible without effectively closing the coastal road to traffic.

At an early stage of this proposal being put on the table, it was suggested that to bring log trucks (up to a max of 44 tons) along the Machrie Moor road, a minimum of 13 passing places would need to be built at a suggested cost of £ 1.2 million.

But the FC representative at the meeting was not even aware of this and was therefore unable to discuss where these passing places would be, suggesting at best a lack of joined-up management in the FC.

At the meeting we were advised that this proposal was not a ‘done deal’, that there was no budget set and no planning application has been submitted. And yet, in this past week, in fact on the day of the meeting, work has gone ahead creating a new and extensive entrance to the forest on the Machrie Moor road at a significant cost.

The views of the Machrie community are being ignored and this flies in the face of the FC website which states that it is ‘required to take particular consideration of remote and rural communities’.

My principal concern is where is our community council in this matter and, just maybe, is it in support of Machrie or is it more influenced by five trucks daily using the String Road?

Yours,

Douglas Johnston, Machrie.