Peaceful non-cooperation: locals and supporters play boules on Sandy Lane Leyton Marshes

A story of what happens when the Olympics comes to town. The Olympic Games and the attendant juggernaut of its needs will threaten an area rich in history and loved by its community and visitors from the rest of London. Hackney has its own unique qualities, a wealth of community projects and a history of great significance and symmetry with today and the prescience for the behemoth of the Olympics, steadily rolling into view.

At the end of November the Pipe Major declared that Hackney's alleged wind turbine on East Marsh had finally lost its blades. In fact this was always an ODA not a Hackney project and it was not going to power Hackney homes but feed into the Olympic Park grid. In June the ODA's other turbine at Eton Manor was propelled into oblivion by a lack of commercial interest. At that time Hackney insisted the East Marsh turbine would still go ahead as the council claimed it did not present the same issues. However, it now turns out it did and the same lack of investors has done for the project.

Collaborative study by a group of masters’ students, mostly international, taking the MSc Environment and Sustainable Development at the Development Planning Unit – University College London.

The study, based on fieldwork undertaken in 2008, set out to

The East Marsh site, to be used as a temporary coach park during Games, also contains two feasible locations for a further turbine (only one turbine is possible due to limitations on turbine proximity with respect to other turbines), subject to flood risk assessment. Figure 2 shows a constraints diagram for this area produced by Ecotricity. BH/EDAW have identified two specific locations within this area which are suitable for wind turbines

Reproduced here is the letter sent to the Hackney Gazette from Hackney Marshes User Group. Please note that the final sentence was edited by the Gazette such that it's meaning was lost when published in the print edition of Thursday 5th November 2009.