Environment dilemma

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This letter is a very personal perspective on the proposed extension in Pendine to the Parc Cynog Wind Farm, from someone who sees herself as green and loves rural Carmarthenshire. I live within 800 metres of four of the six proposed new giant turbines. One of them will be little more than 500 metres from my house and two at just over 600. A fourth will be around 800 metres from me. This proposal presents a dilemma that I hope most other environmentalists never have to confront.

Many people who have lived this close to turbines have had to move because the sound of the blades passing the base of the turbine makes them seriously ill. Their houses have lost value and in some cases have become unsaleable. Should I be gritting my teeth and telling myself that this will somehow not happen to me? Would my elected representatives really do this to me?

I retired four years ago, looking forward to enjoying the quiet of the garden I had created, and to having many friends and family come to visit me. My house is in an isolated and beautiful spot. Will the presence of four giants towering over me completely change this idyllic landscape? There is a reason why some countries have imposed a “distance from dwellings” rule that is more than three times further than these proposed turbines would be from me.

I’m afraid that as I look at the dismally low productivity of wind turbines, at the fact that they can never replace power stations because their power is only intermittent as wind does not always blow, and at the blight they create on our rural Welsh landscape, I know my conclusion. It is that their value has been enormously over-rated and their benefit cannot possibly outweigh the harm that they will do.

I ask the Carmarthen planning committee members who will be considering these new turbines in the near future, to imagine four turbines within this distance of their own houses, and seriously ask themselves if they would then want to approve such a proposal.

Elizabeth Knox

Little Mountain

Pendine

South Wales Evening Post

13 June 2007

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