Area 'trashed' by wind farms

CAITHNESS is being "trashed" by turbines, according to an anti-wind-farm campaigner who is opposed to three new projects planned for the county.

Brenda Herrick insists the far north has "more than its share" of wind farms and is past its saturation point.

"It seems developers see Caithness as fair game," she said. "The area is trashed so we may as well keep trashing it – that seems to be the attitude.

"The applications keep coming in and the developers would not put them in unless they thought there was a good chance of getting them through. There's hardly anywhere in Caithness you can drive without seeing wind turbines. They might be more acceptable if they were not so near people's homes."

Mrs Herrick claims people may be "put off coming here" as they do not want to live beside wind farms.

Mrs Herrick, a former chairwoman of Castletown and District Community Council, claims the turbines proposed at Stemster, Slickly and Camster would, if approved, create "a carpet of steel" as they are close to existing or planned schemes.

Mrs Herrick, who operates the Caithness Wind Information Forum website, is concerned about the cumulative effect of the projects and points out that the 11 turbines at Slickly would be the tallest in the far north with a proposed height of 200 metres.

Meanwhile, plans for the Slickly wind farm were viewed at public exhibitions this week. One was held at Lyth on Monday while there two others were staged at Canisbay and Auckengill. A fourth is being held at Keiss today.