Reading TGO Challengers' accounts of last year's walk across Scotland I was struck by how many Challengers encountered run of the river small hydro schemes, often in places that would otherwise have been described as having a feel of wilderness. To a man, they felt these places had been desecrated
I was aware of the existence of small hydro schemes in the Scottish Highlands as Phil, Andy & I had walked past a few on our Challenge in 2014 prior to our TGO Challenge in 2017. Here's one on the north shore of Loch Quoich. This particular building houses turbines that have a plated capacity of 775kw. (For a recognisable comparison most modern land based wind turbines have a capacity of about four times that amount.) That does not mean it produces 775kw; it's the maximum it can produce. Like wind turbines, run of the river schemes like these are weather dependent. If it doesn't rain for a while the water levels will drop and the power output will be a small fraction of the plated capacity. In a very dry spell it will produce nothing at all.
This means that a lot of work goes in to providing very little power - and variable power at that. These schemes attract heavy renewables subsidies (paid for by you and me in our electricity bills) to make them economic to the developers. Let's be very clear here: They would not be built without these heavy subsidies.
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| 775KW CAPACITY HYDRO SCHEME, LOCH QUOICH |
The photograph below shows that VeryVeryNiceMan Mr Williams posing by an access road to the Taodail Small Hydro scheme near Strathcarron - a hour into our walk into the wild places on last year's TGO Challenge.
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| TAODAIL HYDRO SCHEME ROAD, STRATHCARRON |
This was my take on the two schemes we bumped into that year. We were not impressed. Neither of the roads we saw had made it onto O.S. mapping so they were an unpleasant surprise.
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| SCREENSHOT OF HIGHLAND HYDRO SCHEME MAPPING [CLICK TO ENLARGE] |
The above map is a screen shot of the Highland Council's map that shows all the hydro schemes that have been either been built, or are under construction, or in planning and also those that have been refused planning in the Highland Council planning area.
If you right click on that map and open it at a much larger size in a new tab you will find the Taodail Hydro project. On the actual Highland Council map, if you were to click on the Taodail little yellow dot the screen shown below appears:
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| TAODAIL HYDRO SCHEME [CLICK TO ENLARGE] |
You'll note that the dot is coloured yellow as at the time of the map's preparation (Jan 2017) the project was under construction. When we discovered it in May 2017 it looked virtually complete. You can get rid of the information tab to reveal all the mapped features of the scheme. See below:
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| TAG REMOVED TO SEE MORE CLEARLY [CLICK TO ENLARGE] |
Here's my take on the second run of the river hydro scheme we bumped into on our way over from Glen Orrin to Glen Strathfarrar, one of the most beautiful glens in the Scottish Highlands:
- Pleased as punch we positively gambol down the other side on nibbled turf. The first quarter of an hour is fabulous, following a bubbly caochan downhill until it becomes the Neaty Burn proper. Then it all goes to rat-shit for a while with stumbly heavy heather, awkward clambers up and over the burn bluffs. It's still cold and showers are now coming at us from the west down Glen Strathfarrar. It's all quite knackering.
- And then we see a big new road, dead ahead, following the burn downhill.
- Of course, it's yet another Mini Hydro Power scheme. The actual works themselves are not wildly intrusive, tucked away at the bottom of the little gorges that they are placed within but the roads that enable the schemes to be built and maintained are horribly so. And they're appearing all over the Highlands because there are massive subsidies to be farmed by the already wealthy landowners. The amount of power they produce is minuscule and all at a terrible cost to wild land.
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| NEATY BURN HYDRO SCHEME |
- The old stalkers path down the Neaty Burn has been obliterated by the new road and so we plod somewhat disconsolately down the dirt road wide enough for two trucks to pass each other. The old path chose a line with gentle gradients. This new road dives straight down the hill which is tough on my dodgy left knee. All the wild qualities of this old route have now gone. We're now on a road, heading down to the new housing for the generators - a modern pitched roof construction, not unlike a large house in appearance, surrounded by a large concrete apron and heavy river pebbles.
- We sit against the wall for a little shelter from the rain and it's all rather depressing. Dear God. What were they thinking of? They've already screwed huge swathes of Scotland with bloody wind farms and now they're destroying havens of sylvan bliss with houses, concrete and roads. All in the name (and only the name) of supposedly 'green' policies. Had these idiots actually done the maths they would realise they are pissing in the wind and their tokenism is fucking Scotland to the hilt.
- Bastards.
The next map is the detail gleaned from the Highland Council mapping. This scheme, which has totally destroyed the wild feel of this wonderful place produces a paltry 700kw (plated, remember, so a great deal less on average, and intermittent) of electricity at a massive cost to the environment.
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| ZOOMED VIEW WITH DETAILS OF THE 700KW NEATY BURN HYDRO SCHEME [CLICK TO ENLARGE] |
With this mapping from Highland Council it is now possible to plot these Hydro Schemes on your own maps (a lot of Challengers print out their maps) so that you know when out on the hill where they are and can choose to avoid them.
The Highland Council maps can be found by clicking on the link below. Have a play with them. Blow them up. I believe you'l be very surprised at just how many of these schemes there are and the crass insensitivity of their locations.
Scottish Highland Hydro Scheme Mapping
Comments are welcome:
"Blow them up."
ReplyDeleteWhat was your score on the libertarian scale Alan? I think you may be an anarchist at heart! Oh...you meant the maps? Careful, could be taken out of context that, you'll have the CIA on to you. Or were you being mischievous all along?
Incidentally, it's hard to imagine any of the lazy buggers which frequent this blog, wherever they fall on the political spectrum, feeling anything but outraged with the prospect of tracks bulldozed all over the Highlands.
That reminds me of a 'Not the Nine o'clock News' sketch: "Come home to a real fire. Buy a cottage in Wales."
DeleteA point well made, Sir!
Heart breaking Alan but not really surprising since anything goes in the wild places these days. With the Scottish Government announcing a desire for more onshore windfarms while protecting wild land, 'as best we can', meaning not protecting it very much at all, I think we can expect more and more devastation.
ReplyDeleteSo depressing.
I recall six or seven years ago writing an anti-windfarm piece and you saying you understood my good intentions in trying to get people to protest about them in writing but that in the long run it would make no difference as the Scottish Government and its agencies would never listen.
DeleteSadly, you were spot on Gibson. Every now and then they let one drop, but their masterplan continues like a huge bulldozer. They really don't give a stuff what their own citizens think. They have swallowed the Green NGOs' lies hook, line and sinker. There's not an engineer amongst them who can put them right, even if they were prepared to listen. There's not one SNP MSP who gives a flying fuck.
If it wasn't such a tragedy it would be funny.
Too stupid to realise they’re being stupid, as they say.
DeleteOk Alan, I'll bite.
DeleteYou say you're opposed to hydro-electric schemes and you say the economic case for them is shakey for them to say the least. Putting to one side the economic case, what would you like them to use the land for? It has to be used for something and if it isn't hydro-electric then the alternatives are shooting, forestry or wind turbines. You've posted on this forum before about wind turbines desecrating the landscape and I don't disagree with you. But what then, forestry? That's even worse as it swallows up vast tracts of land which never recover, ever. So it's shooting then, which you are also opposed to.
So what is it?
If you have an estate you need to make it viable otherwise people move out and the Highlands depopulate even more. It isn't as simple as just opposing hydro-electric because something else will go there in its place.
I love mountain hares as I think they are the most beautiful of all the wildlife we see out on the hills. Last month there was a bit on countryfile about an estate which shoots mountain hares as the numbers are affecting the grouse population which they keep artificially high for shooting. Do I have a problem with this? Not really as it preserves the landscape and saves the land from being forested etc.
You can't have it both ways.
In one, Gibson. You've got it in one.
DeletePaul:
DeleteI shall reproduce your comment exactly as you have laid it out here - as it deserves space for proper debate - in a new post, to follow shortly.
The hideous Neaty Burn scheme ... almost no water downstream when I was there 2 weeks ago. Gleann Cia-Aig by Loch Arkaig is much worse, was there late last year. There's barely a burn left running anywhere and the bulldozer's permanent scars are everywhere. Agree totally with your appraisal of SNP MSPs. They'll be hiding inside Holyrood tomorrow instead of engaging with the JMT.
ReplyDeleteHi Jane - It's lovely to have you back again.
DeleteTo me, worse than my despair at the SNP MSPs seemingly wilful ignorance is the attitude of some of our own hillwalkers, who love walking in Scotland yet don't seem to mind the loss of the wild places, or the flailing turbines or the roads that have been driven into the very heart of wild land for shooting birds or building hydro schemes.
Their acquiescence frankly appals me.
My first long walking holiday in Scotland was in the summer 1975 before I headed off to University, marriage, children etc. When I returned to walk there 20 years later, little had changed. But these last twenty or so years has seen the wild places lost, slice by slice at an ever accelerating rate.
Yet a lot of hillwalkers shrug.
Sorry, lost my pen in a snow drift ... Yes, I ask myself that same question and have concluded that a lot of walkers see the hills as objects of conquest, numbers to be bagged, or even just a fashionable form of exercise with nice-looking gear attached. Half of them can't shut up long enough to look at the view let along get a true sense of the landscape. Personally, I think that if you haven't the inclination to defend these places you have no right putting your boots there.
DeleteIt's taken me a while to get back to your comment, Jane. I've thought about this for years, ever since I organised the Wake for the Wild seven years ago. At the time I was absolutely staggered by the fact that even hardened TGO Challengers thought I was making a dreadful fuss. Their view seemed to be that it was the Landowner' land and they could do whatever they wanted with it if it got through Planning. Then of course, they came up with ManMadeGlobalWarming. Even back then I knew that the NGOs like Greenpeace, WWF, and FoE had been totally hijacked by the pretty hard left. I *knew* that this was not science but a cult driven by the economically illiterate left wing green fantasists.
DeleteAnd that's the problem. To rid our hills of wind turbines we have to get society purged of this 'green' lunacy. But you are not going to make many friends in the hill walking community and win allies if you attack the root cause of the problem. So. I resorted to showing how every wind farm application is going to destroy the wild qualities of the hills. Every now and again I write, usually in the comments about the politics of MMGW > AGW > Climate Change.
Jane, you & I are fairly forthright in our opinions, and up for a battle to do our bit, but we have to face t that a lot of people just are not like that. It's just the way things are. We will just have to try our best to enlist help from those who up for it.
But, if we're honest, Scotland is well and truly fucked.
Living way down south I don't walk in Scotland as often as I used to but thinking about it, its rare for any of my walks not to pass a Hydro scheme and it's infrastructure. It's the infrastructure (roads, buildings etc) that I find appalling. If these schemes "have" to be built then there should surely be some extremely strict controls to ensure absolute minimum damage and disruption. Probably a fatuous statement as I doubt that could be achieved but it just seems that as long as you have a river and a grant then you do what you like. Considerations need to go beyond the economic. We (the broader "we") have a duty to protect our wild land and precious environments not to simply treat them as a resource to be exploited. Its all rather sad
ReplyDeleteI agree.
Delete100%
The John Muir Trust is currently campaigning for all designated wild land to be given protection from development. It will be interesting to see if the Scottish Government responds positively, or more importantly with legislation.
I won't be holding my breath.
And you were right. There was no political support for the JMT's campaign to have wild land recognised under law, and no real support for any of the other attempts to secure better protection for our landscapes in the new planning legislation. Readers may care to know that the Grey Corries are to be sacrificed to the god of hydro, as is the Lairig Leacach and - wait for it - most of Glen Etive, where no less than 7 schemes are proposed. Alan, if you haven't got details of these disgusting plans but would like to publicise them, do let me know.
DeleteI posted a reply but it seems to have got lost. To summarise, Holyrood isn't interested in protecting anything and the efforts of JMT and others have been wasted. For anyone who can handle yet more bad news, the Grey Corries,Lairig Leacach and Glen Etive are about to disappear under hydro. 7 schemes in Glen Etive alone, plus an upgraded (ha!) powerline. I'd love to meet the muppets who wave these things through without a first, let alone second, thought. A plague on them.
ReplyDelete