Shetland deserves answers
Letters | Shetland News | 23 October 2020 | www.shetnews.co.uk
The area around the Burn of Lunklet has been rechristened Turbineland by a passer-by. Of course, signs shouldn’t be vandalised, but the new name is rather apt.
Approximately 12 of Viking Energy’s 103 turbines are planned within two kilometres of the waterfall, in addition to miles of access roads.
The Burn of Lunklet is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), just like the Sandwater loch. It is also an area of outstanding natural beauty, a hotspot for wildlife and unique vegetation, and a favourite spot for locals and tourists to the isles to visit.
The catchment area of the burn is within the wind farm.
If we are to see the way the new road next to the Sandwater loch is being constructed as exemplary for Viking Energy’s treatment of SSSIs, it does not bode well for the burn.
There has been at least one incident of residue from the construction site entering the loch, and the measures taken to prevent reoccurrence seem rather haphazard.
Also, regular blasting is taking place a stone’s throw away from the SSSI (no pun intended). Respect for nature and wildlife seems to be utterly lacking on the side of the developer.
Viking Energy’s preferred method of communication is spewing hollow rhetoric like ‘We are committed to being a responsible neighbour’ or ‘Stringent measures will be put in place to ensure that sediment created during construction does not flow into burns and lochs in and around the project site’, but can we actually trust them with the Burn of Lunklet?
Judging from how it’s been going so far, I’d say we can’t.
So here are a few simple questions to Viking Energy and the SIC:
Please don’t use the word ‘committed’ in the answers to these questions. The people of Shetland deserve actual answers.
Ernie Ramaker
Save Shetland
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2020/10/24/shetland-deserves-answers/