A quick Google produces this:-

http://www.proact-campaigns.net/windfarmsandbirds/amec_and_lewis.html

which might offer a few clues. This is a map of the proposed sites:

http://www.proact-campaigns.net/windfarmsandbirds/lewis_wf_map.html

Certainly looks like they want to bollox up this fabulous arrangement. Protest by writing to (borrowed from website):

"Please write to the Scottish Executive, Scotland's regional governing body, and register your objection to the proposal.

Please write to or send an email to

Ms Lesley Thompson

The Scottish Executive

Consents and Emergency Planning Unit

2nd Floor

Meridian Court

5 Cadogan Street

Glasgow G2 6AT

at the Scottish Executive (SE) with copy to the Western Isles Council (CNES)

before 13th December 2004. (link immediately below):

Mail to SE and CNES

In clear:

To: [email protected], [email protected],

Bcc.: [email protected]

A draft text is provided below or you can compose your own using the following main points:

Say that you object to Amec/British Energy's wind farm development application because of the risk to the Lewis Peatlands Special Protection/RAMSAR Area and to the Golden Eagle and
ask for a public inquiry.
(Note: letters that are different, not copies of a model used by other campaigners, have more impact).

DEADLINE: DECEMBER 13TH 2004

DRAFT TEXT

Subject:

LARGE SCALE WIND TURBINE DEVELOPMENT ON A SITE DESIGNATED UNDER NATURA 2000 AND THE RAMSAR CONVENTION

By electronic mail to Ms Lesley Thompson, Scottish Executive

Dear Ms Thompson,

We wish to register an objection to the proposals lodged by Amec and British Energy for a 234-turbine wind farm on the Isle of Lewis in the Lewis Peatlands Special Protection Area (SPA), Isle of Lewis, Scotland, a site also designated under the RAMSAR Convention.

This consortium has chosen to ignore consistent and repeated advice from concerned individual conservationists and organisations to avoid developing on areas designated for their wildlife value. The proposed wind farm is of a scale, and in a location, where the damage it will do will harm this important area - legally protected for its important birds and rare peatland habitat.

This is part of a network of the very best sites for bird life in Europe, protected under European law. Any proposal for development on any of these EU protected sites has to pass a number of tests, the most fundamental being that any development should not damage the integrity of that site. The other factors which have to be considered are whether there are any alternatives to the proposed location for the development and whether or not there is over-riding public interest in the development going ahead.

We believe that the Amec and British Energy proposal would damage the site, that there are suitable alternatives and that the public have a greater interest in maintaining the moor as a wild place than in allowing industrial development on it. A development on a special site like this should be for the benefit of the environment and our future generations, not to their cost. As for the threat to birds, the Golden Eagle is well known to be highly susceptible to turbine blade strike (more than 1000 eagles have been killed in Altamont, California, over the last 20 years) and there are sufficient other significant threats (e.g.: persecution, poisoning) to the Scottish and European populations. Other bird populations and important habitats are, as you are aware, at risk of destruction or despoilation.

This is a matter which causes grave concern to UK and European conservationists and we join them in requiring that you turn down Amec/British Energy's application. Failing this, at the very least, we urge you to demonstrate your accountability and initiate urgently a public inquiry.

Yours sincerely,

(Name and address) "

Don't suppose they'll mind me borrowing this from the website - spread the word and all that . . .

One for HA?

treaclechops x

Wind Farms? Personally I think the Mother would approve!

Let's think. A clean, secure environment for future generations or a nice sight once every 18 years? Hmmm .... tough one that.

Some folks will campaign to stop anything!

Here's a link showing what happened to a beautiful site in Wales.....

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~hills/cc/gallery/index.htm

Interesting to wonder if the gravel for the new the roads might have come from Thornborough?

A summary from Dorset Against Rural Turbines (maybe even including a proposal for a farm at Hod Hill?)....

"In summary then:

Wind turbines will not stop global warming;

Are more expensive than all other mainstream power sources;

Do not produce significant amounts of power;
Do disturb nearby residents with noise - causing physical and psychological illness;
Do harm wildlife;
Require the destruction of large tracts of the environment we are allegedly saving;
Require massive funding from the taxpayer; THAT'S FUNDED BY YOU."

http://www.dartdorset.org/html/reality.html

Stood under the stars near Silbury on Sunday night - bright and clear, cold and still. If you lean back and look up at the sky the quiet spin of it all takes your breath away and puts you quietly in your place.

Then, on the M25 back to Essex on Monday, I passed a single spinning windmill (a new one) in the grounds of what looked like a school or community centre. I just managed to glimpse a large bank of solar panels in the same grounds as I whizzed by in my fossil-fuel powered car. Whoever owns the windmill and solar panels is seriously into energy self-sufficiency. Amazingly, on the car radio just then was a discussion about alternative energy sources. Then I got home, logged onto TMA, only to find the same debate firing away here - spooky.

Perhaps the sentiments posted on this thread are all correct. Perhaps it's just a question of what we 'need' versus what we 'want'. I remember propping up the bar at the Six Bells just outside Chelmsford one evening a few years back when a lady traveller came in for a coffee (she was on her way to Norfolk to visit her son and had stopped off for a coffee). We got chatting and before long we'd told each other our life stories (Christ!). But before leaving she said to me, " You have to understand, Littlestone, the difference between what we want and what we need - you can usually get by without the first but not very well without the last." It was a statement so simple and so elegantly put that it pulled me up short and made me forget why I was in the pub in the first palce.

What we 'need' is an energy source; what we 'want' is an energy source that isn't going to destroy that which is important to us. Perhaps, as so often in life, it's a question of what we need tempered by what we would like :-).

New approval for scaled down wind farm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/highlands_and_islands/5085442.stm

Hello,

This was my letter towards the council:
http://www.iol.ie/%7Egeniet/eng/windmillssleepingbeauty.htm

I am not against wind mills (certainly not), but I think they have to keep in mind some cultural aspects of the environment also).

All the best,

Victor