My Grandfather, Captain Jack Herdman, the founder of Sion Mills Anglers and passionately keen angler himself, would turn in his grave if he knew that the new owner of his beloved Mill in Sion Mills, Co Tyrone, was planning to put in its midst a huge 1MW Anaerobic Digester needing 50,000 tonnes of waste a year to feed it.  This means up to 110,000 tonnes of material having to be transported to and from the site.  Having done the necessary calclulations to ascertain how many heavy lorry or farm vehicle movements that will entail, you then double that number to include the return journeys. The Sion Mills Conservation Plan is available online and encompasses the 1977 statutory Conservation Area booklet. You do not have to read it to realise that the Planning Application for a huge capacity anaerobic digester within the pink wash curtilage around the listed Mill buildings and right next to one of the most spectacular sights in the UK – the magnificent weir and river walks, swinging bridge and the largest mill lade in these islands – is completely unacceptable to all who live in this remarkable village and to people from all over the country who care about Industrial Heritage and about Sion Mills and the potential for it to be a tourism hub second to none, with economic growth and jobs and spin-off that no other project could hope to emulate.  This is living history at its best and most exciting and elsewhere in the world is the most popular form of tourism. 

SION MILLS BPT WILL USE ALL THE FUNDS RAISED ON THIS PAGE TO FUND THE EFFORTS OF THE COMMUNITY'S STEERING GROUP AGAINST THE ENORMOUS PLANNED ANAEROBIC DIGESTER, SO THAT CONSULTANT EXPERTS CAN BE RETAINED TO GIVE THE BEST POSSIBLE CHANCE OF A POSITIVE OUTCOME FOR THE PEOPLE OF SION MILLS.

New Lanark, Saltaire and Derwent Valley Mills are of identical ethos to Sion Mills, and are all World Heritage Sites.  The major heritage bodies in the UK support our aspirations and the Mill was chosen by them as one of the thirty top Buildings at Risk in the UK to appear in the first series of BBC Two’s “Restoration”.  The Industrial Heritage Association of Ireland wrote to NIEA last year appealing that nothing should be allowed to compromise the possibility of having a World Heritage Site in Sion Mills.  This proposed development of an anaerobic digester and a combined heat and power plant will provide no jobs, no positive spin-off for the village, but will bring large volumes of heavy lorries, noise pollution and obnoxious smell, and, especially worrying, the sooner or later inevitable spillage or leakage will undoubtedly pollute the River Mourne and its Atlantic salmon - part of the ASSI and SAC of the tributaries of the River Foyle.  The only beneficiary will be the owner and it will ruin all prospects for economic development through tourism and blight the lives of the 2-3000 people who live in this beautiful place.

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