ANGRY villagers are calling for an independent inquiry into proposals to create an electricity generator on an old landfill site.

Yorwaste, which runs the Cauklands landfill site at Thornton-le-Dale, near Pickering, has asked the North York Moors Park Authority for permission to build the generator to use up gases such as methane.

But local people say the generator would be too close to houses, even though Yorwaste has revised its plans and placed it 200m beyond the original site which was 120m from people's homes.

The parish council and a residents' action group say they have not been given the information about emissions that would reassure them there is no danger.

They are calling for more information about the emmissions and for the generator to be sited 300m farther away, in a corner of the site.

Parish council clerk Roger Richardson said: "The Government is putting many thousands into research on emissions from sites like these.

"We can't prove the emissions are harmful and Yorwaste can't prove that they are not. All we are saying is, until there is proof, don't treat us as the guinea pigs."

He said there were also unanswered questions about sound levels, but added: "If there is a noise, you can hear it and you know it's there. If there are emissions, you are breathing them. Noise can be a nuisance, but with emissions you don't even know if they are there."

A spokeswoman for Yorwaste said there were technical reasons for not wanting to move the generator to the far end of the site.

She said there was no room to site the generator where the parish council and action group would prefer it and the ground there was too soft. "That part of the site was being used in 1989 and now it is settling. If we put the generator on concrete there it would crack," she said.

She said National Power had carried out tests for emissions which had been compared against a range of parameters defined in a German standard because Britain did not yet have a standard of its own.