Shropshire Councillors’ rallying cry over Grid pylons
Shropshire Star | www.shropshirestar.com 4 August 2012
Shropshire Star | www.shropshirestar.com 4 August 2012
Four councillors have joined forces to take on National Grid over its controversial plans for a 30-mile-long high voltage power line across large swathes of the Shropshire and Mid Wales countryside.
The four Shropshire councillors, whose wards could be affected by the plans, have issued a rallying cry and urged hundreds of county residents to turn out for two public meetings being held this month.
In a joint statement they said the proposals were ‘extremely concerning’ and said people must help them force the high voltage lines underground if the development gets the go ahead.
They also called upon Shropshire Council to reaffirm its formal objections as a statutory consultee.
On Tuesday, National Grid announced its preferred route for a 400,000-volt power line linking windfarms in Mid Wales to England’s national power network at Lower Frankton, near Oswestry.
The wind power would be transferred from a substation at Cefn Coch, near Llanfair Caereinion, in Powys.
But councillors Arthur Walpole, for Llanymynech, Joyce Barrow, for St Oswald, Steve Charmley, for Whittington, and Aggie Caeser-Homden, for Ruyton and Baschurch, have raised serious fears about the impact overhead pylons could have on the county economy.
The quartet urged people to attend public meetings at the village hall in Llanymynech on Tuesday from 2pm to 8pm and at the village hall in West Felton on August 15 from 2pm to 8pm.
They said in a statement today: “We know National Grid is at an early stage of this project. They have said they’ll carry on listening to local views. So, it’s really important we all – councillors and local people – let them know what we think about their proposals.”
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/08/05/shropshire-councillors-rallying-cry-over-grid-pylons/