Spittal Hill - Dumbest Place Ever for a Windfarm

[Tilter]

Take a look at http://www.spittalwindfarmopposition.co.uk/

Great - dirty great noisy windfarm on a hill slap bang in the middle of the county where all of us (including tourists) can see it (and Causeymire and Dunbeath windfarms and goodness knows how many other proposals) defacing our lovely county.

This takes the cake. Enough's enough. What do other .Orgers think?

[tommy1979]

would you rather we just kept burning fossil fuels at an exponential rate then??

[lynne duncan]

probably a daft question I am prone to them but why can they not build one large windfarm instead of all these small collections, ie 1 farm with a 1000 or heck 10,000 say 20 miles west of berridale where it cannot be seen from the road( picked there out of the smallest of brain just for example) (though there maybe something there already that would people would object to it going there as well)

[Tilter]

would you rather we just kept burning fossil fuels at an exponential rate then??

Tommy,
Yup. With current and future carbon capture techniques (think of it like you probably do nuclear waste - it's just as bad ("exponentially")). There's lots of fossil fuel. There's no longer a lot of Scottish landscape. Or habitat. Or anything that makes Scotland Scotland. And Caithness has a living to make. And its living is not by wind turbines (except for a few landowners/developers/big foreign energy companies seeking mega-government-subsidies-via-ROC'S).

[Tilter]

probably a daft question I am prone to them but why can they not build one large windfarm instead of all these small collections, ie 1 farm with a 1000 or heck 10,000 say 20 miles west of berridale where it cannot be seen from the road( picked there out of the smallest of brain just for example) (though there maybe something there already that would people would object to it going there as well)

Lynne,
That's a genius question - not a daft question. They can't build one huge mega-mega-watt windfarm in Caithness where no one can see it because it would be in the Flow Country (which is a something like - so don't quote me right now before I can look it up - proposed World Heritage Site). Seriously, we need to protect the Flow Country because it's world heritage status
Blanket-Bog-unique, and THE LARGEST ON THE PLANET I BELIEVE. However, outwith the Flow Country is "Where People Live in Caithness" land and that's where developers want to put windfarms so they can make millions and move to the Caribbean (joking - but probably Antigua).

One small windfarm - to provide free electricity to Watten or Spittal or Strathy or Wherever - would be great!!! But it won't happen. Wind power will put your electricity bill up - that's all. It costs about 3 times the price of conventional power.

[MadPict]

probably a daft question I am prone to them but why can they not build one large windfarm instead of all these small collections, ie 1 farm with a 1000 or heck 10,000 say 20 miles west of berridale where it cannot be seen from the road( picked there out of the smallest of brain just for example) (though there maybe something there already that would people would object to it going there as well)

Maybe you'd like to see this spreading out over the Flow Country.....



Oh heck, why not make a tourist attraction of them while we're at it....

http://forum.caithness.org/showpost....2&postcount=90

[Tilter]

Maybe you'd like to see this spreading out over the Flow Country.....



Oh heck, why not make a tourist attraction of them while we're at it....

http://forum.caithness.org/showpost....2&postcount=90

Thank you Mad Pict. California right? No different than here soon. I won't post the turbine-kill photos of raptors - it's quite gory.

[dozy]

Don't bother with lodging a verbal or written protest .the deals been done the access roads are in and the turbines have been ordered .So much for planning permission, its all cut and dried
When has your vote in local elections ever helped the Environment..3 more Wind Factories have already been given the nod ,its just the public that have to be fooled into believing that its helping cut Carbon Emissions. China will put 10 million new car in their roads this year alone ..Its a GREAT CARBON CON that we are happy to pay into ...

[ruthasuth]

I believe that the access road for the turbines will be the dunn hill road... so no the access roads are not ready for the turbines at spittal, mega changes would have to be made to the bottom of the dunn hill road junction to allow a turbine round the corner. There is a new access road from the Causewaymire into the area of the proposed site but I dont believe that it is for turbines?

There is so much wildlife and birds around spittal hill that will be adversely affected by the wind turbines. It is an undisturbed paradise for the large amount of birds including swan and geese, bats, otters, deer to name just a few.

The windfarms are only viable due to a high government incentive - which us tax payers are contributing to! Windfarms in other countries are now in the process of being taken down due to their inefficiency. Anyone who believes that this is the answer to our power shortage is mistaken. Our current government appear to be trying to tick the "green" box without finding a "real" solution.

All objections are worthwhile and I urge you (where-ever you live) to let your feelings known and raise an objection. The rural community around spittal hill need the support.

[MadPict]

Be it peat bog....
http://environment.newscientist.com/...-turbines.html

or hilltop...
http://johnrsweet.com/personal/Wind/windpix1.html

...the damage to the environment is not minimal as the wind companies allege......

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~hi...lery/index.htm

Is this what we want Caithness to look like....

[spurtle]

[QUOTE=dozy;217480]Don't bother with lodging a verbal or written protest .the deals been done the access roads are in and the turbines have been ordered .So much for planning permission, its all cut and dried
When has your vote in local elections ever helped the Environment..3 more Wind Factories have already been given the nod ,its just the public that have to be fooled into believing that its helping cut Carbon Emissions.

In response to a lot of pressure from community councils and the general public, Highland Council did try to put an end to what was a complete free-for-all by the wind power companies. This is contained in their Renewable Energy Strategy.
The power companies obviously think this is totally irrelevant, and have come forward with big schemes like Spittal, Dunbeath, Durran, Camster, Stroupster, Strathy - others in the pipeline are Scoolary (Barrogill), Baillie Hill - rumours abound about others lurking. They all breach the strategy. These will all bypass the local planning dept by being under the aegis of the Scottish Executive, for which read a resurrected Strathclyde Council - they don't care what happens here. They don't care about HC's strategy, and don't care what you or I think. So the free-for-all is what you have got.
Pressure needs to be put on the executive to start listening to local government, or what remains of it. (Try ringing Caithness Area offices - you get a call centre in Alness After next week, you'll get a council based in Golspie - great!)


The smaller schemes, including Yarrows, will come under HC. The application for this one was so badly drafted that Historic Scotland can't even respond until a proper survey is done - NPower insisted on the cheapest and most basic bird survey to be done, so that this has to be repeated. One gets the impression they have set up the poor landowner who thinks he is going to make a whack of money out of this scheme. I believe it is standard practice to have a raft of applications whiich include a target sacrificial one to draw the fire off the others. Incompetence at that level is not really believable -
use your voice at the elkection to put them on the spot - Caithness will never be the same again if this lot goes through - say good-bye to tourism, watch property prices tumble and electricity bill go through the roof.

[sweetheart]

Caithness is being traded away by the scottish executive to large industry
because large industry is more important than democracy, as we are all just
mere little fleshpods next to the giant gears of global lazyness and war.

China is building a new coal power station every week... the carbon credits
saved are not worth a piss.... the fact is, that the earth's population is simply
too greedy for energy to stop modernising, and as the other 6 billion people
aspire to the only economic lifestyle choice that's been presented to them by
the big corporate industrial complex.

So, it looks like rather the windfarms are a deliberate ploy from edinburgh to
show who rules scotland, to prove that the people in edinburgh own the
scenic highlands, and it doesn't matter what the rural people think at all,
but rather that everyone should be conquored, every landscape spoiled, every
child locked up in a prison and told what to think by endless tapeloops from
the windfarm energy corporations who're devaluing the public goods of the
highlands for another private goldrush.

Frankly, spittal hill is horrible, yarrows is evern worse... that one wrecks
an archeological site that any other nation on earth would keep sacred.

But it seems that the scottish executive is entirely bonkers and out of touch,
i hope labour loses the next poll badly to the libdems.. who will
then continue to follow this path of energy-folly and colonial imperialism
until the planet is 5 degrees hotter and all of england has come up to
cathness and built houses in the only form that will be accepted by planning,
everywhere!; houses shaped like 100 meter tall turbines, tubular
tower blocks with a tiny room on 30 floors and a fast elevator.

The executive needs to stop all the planning applications for parts of the
sacred highlands, as the gold rush will otherwise destroy the only heritage
that has survived all these thousands years of human destructive development.

The largest peatland in *europe* (larger ones in in russia), is doing fine as
carbon sink without being developed. The stupid people are on both
sides of the atlantic following the course of imperial wars and pollution
economics until they've killed off and drowned out a few hundred millions
in low lying lands around the earth. For all its rationality, our society is
more degenerate than any society we used to call primitive, it has become
a malignant tumor that stands to destroy the planet's ecosystem entirely,
and a turbine on spittal hill won't make any lick of difference... so why not
find another way for people in the far north to build an economy besides
resource stripping like in a 3rd world country... why not design and construct
a large world class university for renewable energy system
design, and create a cluster of employment for the long term by not
draining away the brain power of the future economy.

Even america in its foolish destruction of its natural heritage would not
put wind turbines around the grand canyon, and as much, the entire
scottish highland natural zone should be well enough left alone.

[Tilter]

[QUOTE=sweetheart;217505] . . . houses in the only form that will be accepted by planning, everywhere!; houses shaped like 100 meter tall turbines, tubular
tower blocks with a tiny room on 30 floors and a fast elevator.

Sweetheart, it is true that if someone wanted to build a house next door to me I would have to be notified. Highland Council would listen to me if light, etc., was excluded from my property. However, I doubt anyone could build a house next door to me, given Highland Council's quite stringent rules for rural development with regard to housing. However, if someone wants to build a windfarm next door to me, they don't have to bother to notify me at all, and they certainly don't have to give any consideration to my well-being, my livelihood, or my environment and the flora/fauna I share it with.

[Ricco]

Sorry, Tilter. I really like wind farms - I have been known to drive for miles just to see one. I'll drive miles the opposite way to get away from a nuclear site or a fossil fuel power plant.

[Tilter]

Sorry, Tilter. I really like wind farms - I have been known to drive for miles just to see one. I'll drive miles the opposite way to get away from a nuclear site or a fossil fuel power plant.

That's OK Ricco. Whatever floats your boat. You're in luck as you won't have to drive anywhere to see this one. Someone's just given me a pretty picture from the Environmental Statement for Spittal and you'll be able to see it from the Strath to the East coast and from Dunnet to below Dunbeath.

If I were smarter, I could figure out how to post the picture for you. Maybe MadPict could help me? I know the code - [img] and [/img] but how do I link the jpg file in the middle?

[MadPict]

Unless you upload it to the Org server (has to fit the image size parameters) if you host it on somewhere like imageshack.com they will give you the URL for the image once hosted.

[badger]

There'll soon be hardly anywhere in Caithness that you can go without seeing wind turbines in one direction or another. Some places you'll be able to see them in several directions at once. Causeymire, Spittal, Yarrows, Camster, Stroupster (rejected but could come back), Scoolary (that's a big one) and so on. Look at the lists on the .org http://www.caithness.org/windfarms/ over on the right. Could be quite a challenge for all those fighter planes zooming over - like an obstacle course. As for birds - turbines aren't called bird mincers for nothing.

[cliffhbuber]

There are very legitimate concerns raised over the construction of wind power towers.
One concern that seems to have been underplayed in North America is the disruption to migrating birds.
A recent study showed that one skyscraper in Chicago had a dead bird count of approx. 4000 a year.
The latest info I have seen on wind power suggests that on average only 40% of the potential is achieved the course of a year.
Backup energy sources, probably on a grid, will be needed.

Several groups in Canada have researched over 30 years the use of peat for power, as in Ireland, Denmark, and Finland.
Politicians are hesitant to make a (drastic) shift in what they are used to, or to think independently of the pressure from nuclear and coal lobby groups.

Another recent study reveals that peat bogs give off 45 times more methane to destroy the ozone layer than does CO2.
Peat burns much cleaner than coal, including no metals in the affluent.
Locally developed peat plants would provide employment.

Using peat for power would allow for cheaper energy as well as the opportunity of reclaiming bog sites as wetlands for birds, and even to stock with fish.

[Tilter]

Unless you upload it to the Org server (has to fit the image size parameters) if you host it on somewhere like imageshack.com they will give you the URL for the image once hosted.

MadPict, thank you. I've registered but will have to figure out Image Shack later. Also it's a shade too big to simply attach. Apologies too for digressing - I should have put this on a Techy thread.

[Tilter]

Another recent study reveals that peat bogs give off 45 times more methane to destroy the ozone layer than does CO2.
Peat burns much cleaner than coal, including no metals in the affluent.
Locally developed peat plants would provide employment.

Using peat for power would allow for cheaper energy as well as the opportunity of reclaiming bog sites as wetlands for birds, and even to stock with fish.

Cliffhbuber, I'm not following your argument re peat. Am I missing something? It is my understanding that peat (lying undisturbed in the ground) is good because as a carbon sink it is three times as efficient as rain forest. (See the excellent New Scientist article to which Mad Pict provided a link earlier in this thread.) Are you suggesting we dig up our peatland for fuel? I have to say, having dug, dried, stacked and burned peat in the past, I'd prefer doing a shift in the salt mines.

You're spot on about turbines killing birds. It's not just that though, it's the destruction of habitat as well.