Manx Utilities has been holding a series of public consultation events in different locations around the island to allow the public to learn more about proposals to build the Isle of Man’s first onshore windfarm.

Senior officers from Manx Utilities and specialist consultants Wardell Armstrong have been on hand to hear the views of locals about the Cair Vie windfarm.

Earystane & Scard in the southern uplands has been selected as the preferred location for the £40m project.

The consultations featured a virtual reality experience where members of the public have been able to get some idea of the scale of the turbines and what they might look like from selected vantage points in the south of the island.

Manx Utilities say that this development will ‘complement their existing power system assets’ and could generate around a quarter of the island’s annual electricity needs.

However, there has been significant resistance to the proposal and Paul Evans from Wardell Armstrong listed some of the concerns that were being raised at the consultations.

He said: ‘I think the main ones we’ve had are noise ecology - a few people have raised recycling of blades as a concern, which surprised me a little bit as an immediate concern, and a few people have been asking about microplastics coming off blades as well.’

As part of so-called ‘leading edge erosion’, wear and tear on the edges of the turbine blades can cause tiny microplastic fragments to be shed, requiring ongoing repair and maintenance and leading to concerns over the impact on the surrounding environment.

Mr Evans said: ‘We will make sure that the manufacturer believes that the blades will survive for the full 25-30 years on that site.’

Outside the roadshows a series of protests has been held and Kirrie Jenkins from the protest group said that people had been shocked by what the virtual reality mock-up of the sites had shown, especially those living in the south of the island who will be most affected by the development.

She said: ‘Bad as it looks, the reality will be a lot worse and the Manx public aren’t fools - they’ve realised that it’s not something that we want in our precious southern uplands.

‘This is something that the whole of the island needs to take seriously because, once that precedent is set in the uplands, they could be lost entirely.’

So far community consultation events have been held in Castletown, Douglas and Peel.

Today (Friday) the roadshow will move to Ramsey Courthouse, between 2-7pm, and on Saturday (October 26) it will be at Peel Centenary Centre, from midday to 4pm and on Sunday (October 27) it will be back at Ramsey Courthouse, from midday to 4pm.

To learn more visit cairvie.im