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An ill wind for carbon sink
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Carmarthenshire Council has given planning approval for a wind farm up on Mynydd y Betws -16 huge turbines that will not ”save the planet”.
I cannot understand how supposedly intelligent people can think wind farms are a good idea. I have seen myself how much destruction is caused with the construction of a wind farm. I was absolutely horrified. They are not green and environmentally friendly at all. I thought the council was there to represent the people of Carmarthenshire, not to do the bidding of WAG.
Up on Mynydd y Betws there will be a thick layer of peat. This is a carbon sink, a carbon sink that is still growing and absorbing more carbon dioxide. It also acts as a huge sponge and helps to stop the rain water pouring down off the tops of the hills and flooding into the valleys below, as happened recently in Lampeter.
When this peat is dug up and disturbed by huge machines, the peat dries out, cracks and blows away.
As anyone knows who has had a plant in a pot of peat-based compost, it is very hard to get it to re-absorb water once it has dried out. It has to soak in water for a long time. This simply can’t be done on top of a hill the size of Mynydd y Betws. So when the peat is put down by the developers to hide all the shale and hardcore around a wind turbine base, it is dead peat. It took many hundreds, maybe even thousands of years to develop, and can’t be dug up and re-laid like someone’s garden lawn.
When peat dries out it releases methane as well as many tonnes of carbon dioxide. There is a part of the Kyoto agreement that states that existing carbon sinks should not be damaged, what is putting up wind turbines on a peat bog going to do if not damage the existing carbon sink? You can’t make a cake without breaking eggs, and a wind farm cannot be put up without huge damage to the existing carbon sink.
Beverley Griffiths,
Byrgwm, Cwmdu
4 July 2007
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