Letters against Glyncorrwg wind plant
Letters in Welsh newspapers concerning for Amsterdam-based Nuon’s wind farm application for 100+ 475-feet-high turbines in the South Wales Valleys:
5.2.09
Enough is enough!
SIR – Last Saturday in Cymmer, Nuon, the Dutch energy company, showed their proposed wind farm of more than 100 turbines, each 475ft high, for Forestry Commission land stretching from Tonmawr to Maerdy.
This wind farm will devastate the landscape of Glyncorrwg. Nuon’s images showed turbines all along the hills surrounding Glyncorrwg, above the Ponds Development and behind the church.
The turbines will tower over the village. This wind farm will have a disastrous effect on our lives and our scenery.
Tourism, which is our hope for the future, will be severely affected as the turbines are to be all around the bike trails and close to the ancient Coed Morgannwg Way.
This will be the biggest wind farm in England and Wales and the turbines will be the highest.
Many people at Nuon’s exhibition were shocked and upset at what they saw and were strongly against the proposal. We have said that the turbines are too high, too many and too near the village of Gyncorrwg. This proposal is totally unacceptable.
We already have a wind farm, Ffynnon Oer, in the Upper Afan Valley… enough is enough!
Such developments should be shared out and not dumped in one area.
We shall fight against this wind farm which will ruin our area and ruin our hopes for the future of Glyncorrwg.
BETTE SLATER
Secretary, Glyncorrwg Action Group
Western Mail
walesonline.co.uk
12.2.09
Wind farm threat
SIR – The wind farm planned by Nuon, the Dutch firm, for more than 100 turbines each 475ft high on forestry land is frightening.
These huge turbines will almost circle the village of Glyncorrwg in the upper Afan Valley and if you add on the other two wind farm plans, we will be completely surrounded.
The wind farm will spoil our views and our fast-growing tourist industry. The turbines will be a danger to people on our famous bike trails and to walkers in our hills.
Wild life, birds and animals, will be under threat.
I attended Nuon’s exhibition in Cymmer (January 31) and read the many comments from residents opposing the wind farm.
Who will listen to us? We need help from our council, our MP Hywel Francis and our AM Brian Gibbons to protect Glyncorrwg from this frightening wind farm.
LYNNE HANCOCK
Glyncorrwg, Port Talbot
Western Mail
walesonline.co.uk
16.2.09
More notice needed of turbine ‘events’
SIR – I think I am speaking on behalf of many people living at the top end of the Cynon Valley when I say we were horrified by the wind farm proposals contained in the Nuon pamphlet that dropped through some letterboxes on a few days ago.
The pamphlet gave notice of eight “events”, the first being in Hirwaun Village Hall that very evening, ostensibly to allow Nuon, the developers, to consult with locals on their proposals to cover a vast acreage of the hillside between Aberdare, Maerdy and Neath and hills to the west with more than 100 wind turbines.
Many Hirwaun villagers did not get the pamphlets until after the event.
Nuon’s intention seems to be to get the proposals through the public consultation stages as surreptitiously as possible and circumvent protest. No doubt Nuon will have excuses but any organisation worth its salt would give the public at least a month’s notice of such “events”.
The tone of pamphlet is cordial and upbeat, the picture on the front a pleasant rural scene without a wind turbine in sight.
Perhaps we are meant to believe they will be invisible.
The words “landscape” and “visual effects” are employed but once in the pamphlet, almost as an afterthought. There is only one mention of “what impact the project might have on the ecology of the area”.
All that disguises the fact that what they are proposing will have the most devastating effect on the Welsh landscape, perhaps since Germany blitzed Swansea during the Second Word War.
The magnitude of the proposals beggars belief and will destroy the wonderful scenic quality of our local landscape for us and future generations – for who is going excavate those massive chunks of concrete groundbase, dispose of the turbines and restore the landscape when they become redundant in 20 or so years time?
They will stand as monuments to our folly, Nuon will probably no longer exist and the bosses will be living off the fat of the land, the fat being the profits they will have picked up from this very lucrative investment.
The fact is that the turbines are already redundant for, as anyone who has thought about it for a moment knows, the cost of constructing and maintaining these monstrosities will be far greater than the value of any electricity they will ever produce in their short lifetimes.
Make no mistake about it, this wind farm project, like all the others, has got nothing to do with a desire to produce green energy and has everything to do with greed and political expedience.
The reason we are getting it is because Labour relies on the donkey vote syndrome, that blind faith in the wisdom of Labour Party that has blighted progress in the Valleys for years. Labour know they can do they can do what like and get away with it.
Shame on Plaid Cymru for not interceding to protect the homeland which they claim to cherish and represent.
A planning application for a much smaller wind farm project near Hirwaun was rejected recently at a public inquiry, and we breathed a collective sigh of relief.
We had a vague idea that a much bigger project was in the wind and we are hoping the aesthetic grounds on which the smaller project was rejected will apply in this case.
Tony Wood, Cwmdare
walesonline.co.uk
19.2.09
Wind farm plans are not welcome
MAY I be allowed to ask an open question to anyone with influence inside or outside of government?
Our community of Glyncorrwg, with the help of many visitors to the area, the support of Neath Port Talbot Council and, indeed, that of members of the National Assembly, has succeeded in stopping proposals to construct wind farms around our peaceful and beautiful area over the past few years.
Now we have a mind-stunning proposal from Nuon to decimate us.
Why do developers ignore the rights of our community and local government who have democratically voted against previous wind farm proposals in our area?
Why do developers imagine that they have the right to keep presenting new proposals for wind farms here?
Why do they think that we should accept them?
Why do they believe that we will not fight them with all the effort we can muster?
Why do they not just leave us alone?
Ray Tittley, Greenmeadow, Glyncorrwg
Port Talbot Guardian
walesonline.co.uk
27.2.09
No ‘consultation’
SIR – Tony Wood’s letter (February 16) on the so-called “consultation” by NUON on wind farms prompts me to respond.
Last November, at a meeting in London on the UK Renewable Energy Strategy, a representative of NUON asked the following questions: Should Ministers remain in the Government if in their constituencies they lead campaigns against renewables, particularly wind energy? He then asked how these ministers could be removed? This was greeted with loud applause.
The chair’s reply was to say this Government is committed to renewables and signing up to a binding European target.
If we fail to hit this it will, he said, result in European infraction proceedings.
I never cease to wonder why we continue this pretence at consultation when the outcome has apparently already been decided.
How democratic is that?
ELIZABETH MANN
Darlington, Co Durham
Western Mail
walesonline.co.uk
28.2.09
I fear for democracy
SIR – I read with interest Elizabeth Mann’s letter concerning the representative of wind power company Nuon who asked how Ministers who opposed wind power could be “removed” (Letters, February 26).
I have a copy of the minutes of the meeting where this occurred. It was the Westminster Energy, Environment & Transport Forum Keynote Seminar – The UK’s Renewable Energy Strategy held on November 26, 2008.
The Nuon speaker was Gareth Wardell, ex-MP for Gower, who was a Forestry Commissioner for Wales at the time when the Cefn Croes wind “farm” was a matter of such dissent, and is now built on Forestry Commission land.
Mr Wardell’s exact words were minuted as: “How do we, when we have Government Ministers, some of them in the Cabinet, who virulently in private oppose renewables, particularly wind energy, and in their constituencies lead campaigns against such renewables coming into effect. Should they remain in the Government and if not how do you propose to remove them?”
I fear for the future of democratic process when such questions can be met “with loud applause”.
Dr JOHN ETHERINGTON
Llanhowell, Pembrokeshire.
Western Mail
walesonline.co.uk
Tags: Wind power, Wind energy
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