Environment and Sustainability Committee
Inquiry into Energy Policy and Planning in Wales

EPP 122 – S Day

Dear Sirs,

I write to express my concerns over plans to cover the uplands of Wales in wind turbines, and her valleys in pylons.  My particular fears are for my home region of Mid Wales, currently awaiting a decision in the county of Montgomeryshire on the siting of a 19 acre substation and a line of giant pylons through our communities and over the border into Shropshire.

Our Mid Wales countryside is beautiful. We who are lucky enough to live here cherish it : a feeling evidently shared by the millions of tourists who come here to walk, camp, fish, mountain bike, bird watch and spend their money in our shops, hotels and pubs. Who wants to ramble over hills covered in whining windmills, or stay in a caravan park overshadowed by high voltage cables?  Tourism is big business here in rural Wales. There is precious little in the way of employment opportunity; hardly any jobs in manufacturing or even farming left. Per capita income is among the lowest in the United Kingdom. The proposed destruction of our landscape can only serve to further deplete jobs as local shops, bed-and-breakfasts and cafes close.

Our uplands are home to a rich and varied bird population. What will be the impact on wildlife of concreting over the hills and installing hundreds of giant rotating blades?

The nightmare of transporting 200 ton loads of turbine on massive lorries up narrow mountain roads hardly seems to have registered with the planning authorities. Before they even begin the tortuous haul up the hillside (often involving the cutting of a new access road) the juggernauts have to make it through our market towns and villages. The ensuing traffic chaos and structural damage to property defies imagination.

Despite reassurances on the "safety" of high voltage cables running adjacent to homes and schools, many local people remain unconvinced. 

There is genuine deep-seated fear (whether justified or not) of a link between proximity to such cables and an increased incidence of cancers.

I would urge the Committee to reassess the feasibilty and desirability of "TAN 8". It is outdated and desperately in need of reconsideration.

How can an ineffectual, wasteful technology necessitating the trashing of the landscape and wildlife of rural Wales and the destruction of our frail economy be in any sense "green"?

Yours faithfully,

S Day