Wind farm critics fear a wall of turbines on treasured Sutherland ground
The north coast in Sutherland will be blighted by a “wall of turbines” if wind farm proposals are approved, critics told a planning inquiry yesterday.
Thirteen turbines would be built five miles south of Strathy, between a 33-turbine wind farm and the site of an approved scheme for 39 more. Another 23 are being considered between Strathy and Armadale.
Objections at the inquiry were led on its third day by Wildland, the conservation company bankrolled by the billionaire landowner Anders Povlsen.
It warned that clusters of turbines were damaging the “visual effect” of the Flow Country, Europe’s largest expanse of blanket bog.
“The possible combination of Armadale, Strathy North, Strathy Wood and Strathy South would create the effect of a wall of turbines, up to 200 metres high, extending on an extremely long line from north to south,” Ian Kelly, for Wildland, said. “Such a wall of turbines would be unprecedented in the Highlands.”
All of those but Strathy North, Kelly said, would be fitted with aviation warning lights.
Wildland objected in vain to the two other Strathy schemes.
Kelly said that raising the height of the turbines from 145 to 180 metres, making aviation lights necessary, would increase their impact. Motorists on the A836 at Strathy would, he claimed, be confronted with “complete cumulative visual confusion”. That road is on the North Coast 500, a route that the Highlands markets heavily to tourists.
Wildland criticised Nature Scot’s updated guidance to developers on how to assess the visual impact of wind farms. The company’s expert witness, the environmental scientist Dr Steven Carver, claimed that the guidance was vague and did not help people to envisage how turbines would look from afar.
The planning inquiry, which is being run online, is due to finish today.
