COMPOSTING pioneers have been left fuming over opposition to their controversial plans for a wood-burning "biomass" generator.

Christchurch council's planning control committee voted unanimously to object to the proposals for a furnace complex including a 70-foot high chimney on the Eco-Composting site beside the airport off Parley Lane at Hurn.

The Eco application will be decided by Dorset County Council, but Hurn parish council and borough planners are concerned the biomass facility will be an eyesore in the greenbelt and its emissions will threaten the surrounding heathland areas of special scientific interest.

Planning officer Giles Moir, in his report to the committee, said the proposals were inappropriate in the greenbelt and the applicants had not proved any special circumstances to outweigh the general presumption against development.

Ward councillor Sue Spittle said she congratulated Eco-Composting for its innovative scheme but proposed lodging an objection with the county council on environmental grounds.

But Eco bosses say these fears are unfounded. Technical manager Mike Thompson claimed the chimney, at just four feet in diameter, would not stand out from the nearby airport buildings and emissions would be "virtually imperceptible apart from a slight heat haze".

He said: "Emissions will be kept to a minimum by careful control of operating conditions to reduce pollutants at source.

"A state-of-the-art pollution control system will handle emissions of acid gases and particles which cannot be controlled at source.

"The concentration of pollutants in the emissions from the stack will be considerably lower than those emit-ted from domestic wood burning."

And he denied the plant would be a "blot on the landscape", saying it would be a logical extension to the waste wood recovery operations carried at the Eco site, which currently stockpiles tons of scrap wood chips for export to Europe, where biomass technology is already widely used.