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

EPP 260 – Stephen Long

Dear Sir/Madam
    I am writing to show my objection to SPEN proposals to build numerous 26M high steel pylons and 132 kV lines to connect undetermined windfarms to the proposed hub. Consultation forms are totally devisive. Only communities mainly effected have been approached, and at many of the exhibitions only one of either SPEN or National Grid were present, and realistic visuals non-existant.
Throughout the whole process neither SPEN nor National Grid could give exact locations of where anything could be, so how can we be consulted about that which nobody yet knows. Or could this be just DICTATION.  No renewables company were represented.
One perticular side of the valley north of Cefn Coch were not even given the option of an exhibition at their community centre untill they demmanded one. It took place a week before the consultation ending date and was only attended by SPEN, National Grid refused to attend. This community is within the breadth of the hub and would have two sets of high voltage cables passing right overhead. Not only that, they would then also have to put up with the blight of their skyline with wind turbines, and have pylons on their doorsteps. The only direct information they had was to four properties that recieved National Grid information which was next to DECEPTION for the layman.
This whole project is flawed. The enviromental impact will be huge, the landscape scarred forever, on the scale of the mines of south wales, and the nuclear decommissioning in north wales. Its time this kind of lunacy stopped!
The hub, a collossal crator amidst a landscape of unsurpassed beauty. I do not see throngs of tourists flocking to view windfarms. But they do so to see our wonderful land. The economic damage will be 'devastating' breaking our now fragile economy. Thus taking away the human righ to live and work.
Our valleys flood every year, it is hard enough for all of us to anticipate these natural phenomena, let alone the additional volume of water displaced by the tonnes upon tonnes of concrete, displacing the natural water holding capability of the wetlands.
The stress, fears of childhood leaukaemia, noise pollution, I do not think I need go on about this subject, as you know full well the health implications of this project.
I now come to alternatives. THE WASTING OF OUR ENERGY!
Little to nothing is done to promote it. If street lights were turned off at midnight, along with shop window lighting, heating in the winter when shop doors are 'open'! why have escalators when most people have working legs? Need I go on?!
Instead of blighting the landscape, why not give grants for each individual household to have a 'small' turbine or photo ELE cells. Then there is wave and tidal, each turbine out at sea could have a tidal turbine below, two for one. We do not need them on land, on mass.
Wind turbines are unreliable, your predicted carbon footprint for each is a farce. The reconstruction cost of the road systems damaged by transporting the materials, payments year by year to farmers for the turbines, one off payments for pylons, production costs for the turbines themselves, the three to four years of the consultation, let alone the legal costs for compensation and legal costs for court action bought about by individuals and protest groups opposing this project.                                                            
The figures do not add up. And oh, I forgot, there is the cost of your company for looking at these answers!

Mr Stephen Long