Campaigners Criticise ScottishPower Power Line Report
Following the publication of ScottishPower’s – ‘The Stirling Visual Impact Mitigation Scheme Consultation Report’ campaigners have criticised the energy company for rejecting pleas to bury sections of the Beauly to Denny power line – saying that it will destroy the landscape and put public health at risk.
According to the report, ScottishPower, which is constructing 20km of the new 220km high-voltage power line, said that burying the cable below ground would not be “appropriate”.
The Scottish Government granted consent for the overhead transmission line in January this year, after a long-running public inquiry – on condition that the operator explored options to mitigate the visual and landscape impact of the scheme – where building underground is favoured by opponents of the pylons.
However, ScottishPower’s report confirms it is considering burying or removing sections of existing power lines in the area – but that excludes the new 400-kilovolt line. ScottishPower suggests the power lines will be camouflaged by tree-planting, landscaping, and painting some of the pylons in a deeper colour to blend into the countryside.
But campaign group Stirling Before Pylons has responded by saying:
“ScottishPower’s failure to recommend any undergrounding is farcical. No amount of tree and hedge-planting can hide a line of 50m-high pylons, or protect against the very real dangers posed by electric and magnetic fields radiating off the line”
Helen McDade, head of policy for conservation charity the John Muir Trust, also added:
“Painting a 60m pylon doesn’t really take away from the fact that you’ve put concrete and steel into an area which, before that, people perceived as a beautiful landscape…
… You have to ask, why are we devastating our landscape to bring something down through the spine of Scotland, to then take it round to a sub-sea cable which we were told was too expensive? Why is Scotland’s landscape less deserving of that extra cost?”
On the other hand, Duncan McLaren, chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, welcomed ScottishPower’s decision not to “scar the countryside” by digging massive trenches for the high voltage line, he said:
“There’s a little bit of a sense that out of sight is out of mind, and that I think actually we need to recognise that our lifestyles depend on a supply of electricity and all forms of generation have an impact”
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Source: HeraldScotland