Stornoway Gazette, 19th February, 2004.
Pie in the Lewis sky?
THE WHOLE windfarm thing gets more and more confusing.
Politicians and
developers speak of fortunes to be made while others predict
disappointment and
disaster. The improvers tell us that these hundreds of huge
turbines are
environmentally-friendly and yet those same massive
structures threaten our scenic
moorlands as nothing else has ever done.
What is more surprising is the utter lack of proper discussion
about this
most sweeping of changes. People have taken sides while
still knowing very little
about the whole thing. Those who are for it take offence if
any doubts are
raised. The news from other countries does not fill us with
confidence in this
'answer to all our ills'. Scholars in Germany have written a
now famous paper called
the Darmstadt Manifesto, challenging the economic and
environmental
effectiveness of windfarms, speaking of the 'industrial
transformation of cultural
landscapes which have evolved over centuries... More and
more people are subjected
to living unbearably close to machines of oppressive
dimensions'.
Denmark is often quoted by backers of windfarms as a model,
but their
government has recently reduced subsidies drastically. Aase
Madsen, the MP who chairs
energy policy in the Danish Parliament is emphatic, 'For our
industry it
(wind-power) has been a terribly expensive disaster'. Niels
Gram of the Danish
Federation of Industries stated recently, "In green
terms windmills are a
mistake and economically they make no sense. Many of us
thought wind was the 100 per
cent solution for the future but we were wrong. In fact,
taking all energy
needs into account, it's only a three per cent
solution."
We are being made to question whether wind energy is
delivering what was
promised. The chief economist of Eltra, Denmark's biggest
electricity distributor
Jytte Kaad Jensen pinpoints a startling situation, "In
just a few years we've
gone from some of the cheapest electricity in Europe to some
of the most
costly." So much for Denmark.
The late in the day full-hall meetings in Edinbane in Skye
show the worry
people now have about the benefits for the community brought
by this highly
disruptive innovation. The crofter once again, suddenly but
belatedly, realises
that he is to be the tail-end Charlie after the
multinationals and landlords have
taken the lion's share of the profits. Pairc and Ness are
showing signs of
waking up to this same realisation. Are people wrong in
beginning to recognise
that the sweet story is a lie and that the big boys will go
off with the big
money? Let's keep asking. We are told-that there is no
national plan of where these burgeoning
windfarms are to be built. It seems to be 'first come, first
accepted'. This worried
some of our MSPs, but the local ones seem to regard these
land-based windfarms
as a Labour Party edict that cannot even be questioned. It
takes someone like
Michael Foxley of Highland Council to say that the size and
situation of the
massive scheme planned for Morvern 'beggars belief'.
On the theme of community benefits, people were astonished
when a recent
study by the highly respected IPA Energy Consulting,
commissioned by the Western
Isles Council and Highland Region came to that same
conclusion - that the
locals were being offered a measly fraction of the profits.
"The key phrase,"
said Michael Foxley, "is that the communities are being
offered a very poor
deal.'` Who would have thought it, listening to a Mr Price
from Amec?
Work is another important issue. We now hear that only a
handful of people
will be employed on these huge projects once they are up and
spinning- maybe 10
people in the whole of Lewis. Arnish, the big white hope, is
already showing
the endemic ills of development that rests in the hands of
unknown outsiders.
Does it ever work?
Why does it seem beyond the ability of political and
development agencies to
come up with a range of employment opportunities to support
the local
population without always having to ruin something else in
order to do so? If it isn't
the removal of a mountain it's the desecration of the very
place people want
to live in. We keep on being told that in tis digital age
anything is possible
with the world becoming smaller and the handicaps of
distance being overcome.
And still we continue to lose our families by the score.
Depopulation is a
serious problem and filling the place with windmills will
not improve the
situation at all.
The irreparable damage to Lewis's moor and to the scenic
value of the area is
widely accepted, and is feared and deplored by more and more
people. A recent
letter in the 'Scotsman' from two professors stated,
"The base needed to
support a large turbine requires about 1,000 tonnes of
reinforced concrete. Huge
road networks are also needed to erect and service the
turbines. Once the bases
and roads are built, they will never be removed."
There are estimates that Lewis may eventually have up to
1,000 turbines.
There are to be 300 between Ness and the West Side, another
300 in Lochs to begin
with. If the cable is put in place, other areas such as
Uig will not be
denied their fair share of the 'bog brushes in the sky'.
One of the most perplexing things about all this is that the
politicians are
making no effort to have the turbines placed far inland and
out of sight.
These peatlands are protected but the people aren't. Of
course, it would cost the
developers more, and we cannot have that. In the south, it
seems that
effective protests have driven the government to build
windfarms out at sea and away
from towns and villages. Wave energy and sea turbines may
before long replace
the land-based sites. Are we to be left with distorted,
tilting monsters not
unlike the defunct oilrigs - as the industry moves on? We
don't know, do we?
Evervone tells us that the environment will be fully
protected, and that the
environmental impact studies will ensure this. But a study
commissioned by
Scottish Natural Heritage found that such impact studies
have underestimated the
scale of projects and the severity of impact. The confusion
continues.
Letters in the local press continue to warn us of what we
are about to let
ourselves in for. 'Islanders awake! Rise up and stop this
devastation of your
environment...', said one.
Another one shared his experiences in Cumbria, "Why
do you think they want to put these windfarms in Lewis
anyway? It's because the
big business involved think you are a kind of underdeveloped
country,
desperate for anything, so will leap at the chance to be
part of this new industry."
Are we taking a blind and greedy leap into the dark?
"We welcomed these
windfarms with all their promises. We now reject them
all," he concludes.
The onslaught on the lives of birds is frightening. The
death of 'Filled
Heart', the red kite sliced to death by the huge blade of a
turbine, has caught
the public attention. But the scale of destruction is much
more widespread since
the rotating blades are at the same height the height of a
40-storey office
block as the flight-paths of birds, such as the golden
eagle. Worse, eagles
and other birds of prey are known to be 'attracted' into
areas swept by
rotors, not least since rabbits will feed on the new grass
replacing the heather at
the base of turbines. The renowned environmentalist David
Bellamy has recently
demanded that windfarms be banned as they 'chop up birds'.
Data from
Altamont Pass wind farm in California show 6,000 hawks,
1,000 eagles and 2,000 owls
killed since it was built.
A large study carried out in Navarre in Spain found
that up to 6,500 birds were killed yearly by rotating
turbine blades.
It is for such reasons that the RSPB has opposed 27 big
windfarms and has
concern over many more. For example, Anne McColl, on behalf
of RSPB, aims to take
all the way to Europe objections to the veritable forest of
sky-scraping
turbines planned for the whole of northern Lewis. Some speak
of it as the whole of
Lewis being turned into one windriven power station. Are we
ready to accept
this? There was a time when the media and investigative
journalism would have tried
to keep us informed on these matters. Our once radical press
now merely
resorts to counting the number of letters written by people
opposed to this
development.
No public body has been formed to give voice to this as a
Lewis issue,
and local meetings seem concerned mainly with the level of
subsidy that might
be made available. Equally surprising is that no-one seems
to speak up for our invaluable
tourism industry which brings significant enterprise here.
Visitors come to enjoy
our amazing, unspoilt landscape and clean vistas of sea and
sky. Will they
continue to come to admire Lewis in its new role of being
one vast wind power
station that will encompass its limited and precious island
land space? I know
them, I probably speak to more of them in a day in my
gallery in the summer than
our politicians do in a year: they won't be coming. And who
can blame them?
It is never easy to talk in a simple way about our physical
surroundings and
how we relate to them. Let us just say that our island home
has been to
generations a part of their very existence. In one way we
are not aware of it, while
in another way it is never out of our awareness. One modern
writer has it, "We
are constantly aware of what may seem trivial things: the
density of light,
the angle of light, the temperature, the cloud cover, the
clean lines of the
land and the sky and the sea..." Local and national
politicians see little
voting value in being all-enviromental, and often denigrate
those who speak of it,
tarring them with being otherworldly, well-heeled
nincompoops.
When our Iandscape has been changed beyond all recognition
and when Lewis
will be peppered with hundreds of these extraordinary huge
structures, and where
we cannot be out of sight of them in any corner of the
island, will we then
and only then rue the day we accepted these companies with
open arms? Will
it be all too late then? Will we tell our children, 'I never
realised. Nobody
told me what it would be like'? 'Were you asleep or
something?' they may ask
us. 'I tried to understand,' I will murmur feebly.
JAMES SMITH
Oiseval Brue Lewis