YOUR VIEWS: Ardverikie hydro dam will ruin special place
Gilkes Hydro’s plans for Ardverikie Estate are awful.
They want to build a pumped storage hydro scheme (PSH) but in such a place and in such a way as to maximise its destructive impact.
Typically, current or planned PSH schemes use big deep lochs as their lower reservoirs.
The well-known Cruachan scheme uses Loch Awe and there are plans to use Lochs Ness, Lochy, Ericht for future schemes.
Using such lochs means that vast amounts of water can be pumped from, or flow back to them without significantly affecting their levels and the flora and fauna of the water margins.
The Ardverikie’s Lochan na Earba is small and shallow so pumped storage, requiring rapid and frequent water volume changes would keep altering the loch level significantly with consequently negative effects on nature.
The upper reservoir for such hydro projects is typically a corrie loch and relatively ‘tucked away’– Cruachan again and the proposed Corrie Glais reservoir above Loch Lochy.
The Ardverikie proposal in contrast involves deepening Loch a’ Bhealaich Leabhain with a monster dam.
As the Gaelic name suggests this loch is high up on a through route at a pass.
As a consequence there is a stark, glaring landscape change.
And then there’s the proposed obliteration of the fine stalkers path with a rough road for monster earth movers.
And what about the total loss of that beautiful beach at Lochan na Earba’s Western shore?
No doubt the proposers will appeal to the demands of addressing climate change but the worthiness of this objective is submerged by a sense that the proposers and their financial backers are mainly in it for a meaty profit.
Premium prices for power delivery at peak demand isn’t principally for emissions reductions nor to help out the have nots – it’s for ever bigger profits for the haves.
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There is a case for PSH but alternative means of smoothing renewables’ supply and demand are rapidly developing.
And for PSH itself there needs to be much greater democratic control. Developments should surely only be allowed where they would be most effectively beneficial and least environmentally damaging. Energy policy is surely too important to be left to the whims of the market.
Dick Webster
Campbell Crescent
Kingussie.
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Local authorities should get the basics sorted first
As a main home owner in the area I am shocked to note how many derelict and empty properties there are in Scotland.
Why are second home owners being targeted by the new short term lets control area here in the strath when the basics need sorting?
I have two derelict properties within 100 yards of my Dalwhinnie house. Councils must be held accountable for allowing this to happen.
Alan Birtwistle
Dalwhinnie.
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Hydro dam is better than carpet of turbines
Re last week’s page 3 article in which TV presenter Cameron McNeish urges energy firm to look elsewhere with Ardverikie hydro dam plans.
I hear the opposition as well as those proposing the scheme, however, for me any chance to reduce the amount of windmills yet to be built has got to be given more credence and consideration.
Schemes like these could have been created or considered in many places where windmills were given the nod from planning in the same areas where millions are now being spent removing electricity pylons.
Highland Council’s planning committee and The Cairngorm National Park Authority’s counterpart are not getting involved enough in the planning of green electricity harvesting from the countryside.
We have enough wind farms scarring the hillsides. If the authorities can’t find another way then the electricity harvest has reached its peak.
Bill Nicol
Forres.
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Government can solve problem of its own creation
The lack of long-term accommodation to rent in Badenoch and Strathspey will not be resolved by building more homes to buy.
It is unlikely to be resolved by clamping down on short-term rentals alone (Strathy, May 4, front page).
Prior to 2017 around 58 per cent of long-term accommodation to rent in our rural areas was provided by the private sector.
The younger generation entering the workforce, those with limited financial means and those wishing to move to where their skills are in demand depend on long term accommodation to rent.
In 2017 legislation replaced Short Assured Tenancies with Private Residential Tenancies. This discouraged private sector landlords from letting long-term.
In areas dominated by tourism, accommodation was sold off for holiday or retirement homes, some long-term rental accommodation was used for short-term lets.
To resolve the shortage of long-term accommodation to rent the Scottish Government should reduce demand and increase the supply. Legislation needs to be changed to ensure long-term letting is to the mutual benefit of both landlord and tenant, encouraging private sector landlords to rent long-term.
The demand for rental accommodation can be reduced by returning to a more self-sufficient economy producing a higher proportion of the goods we consume, rather than a rural economy so dominated by tourism.
This will also reduce our contribution to global greenhouse gases by producing more of what we consume here in Britain.
Today we import a growing proportion of what we consume based mainly on price, with insufficient regard to human or livestock welfare, global biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions, pollution or security of supply.
The shortage of long-term accommodation to rent is an issue created by Government. It can only be resolved by changes in legislation by the Scottish Government.
Jamie Williamson
Alvie Estate Office
Kincraig.
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Minority group is being persecuted
So in England the similar proposals for short term lets are for the existing operation to get automatic approval but in the Spey Valley this is no longer the case (Strathy, front page, May 4).
Even those that commenced and invested in holiday let in the last 10 years, in good faith and with the legitimate expectation that they would be allowed to make a living out of their investment, now face having to apply for planning permission and likely refusal.
In a country that prides itself in defending minority rights and future rights – it’s a pity that that same sentiment does not extend to existing and historic minority rights. Perhaps we should all have invested in motorhomes
Gordon Thomson
Gordonhall Farmhouse
Ruthven Road
Kingussie.
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Drop-off outside of town’s Co-op
Where would we be without the excellent Dial-a-Bus service in Grantown, provided by Highland Council and run so efficiently by Lindsay and Liz Jack?
They personify reliability for the transportation of the older generation. The importance of this service has to be recognised by those who sit in high places.
They need to use their power to secure a parking space for the bus outside the Co-op retail unit.
This would eliminate the hazardous journey for passengers who have to carry their messages across the busy road to the pick-up point at the bus shelter.
This is a very congested road with a steady flow of traffic where the parking of cars close to the junction at the traffic lights obliterates sight of all on-coming vehicles.
Those parking places should all be removed before a serious accident occurs in the town.
If contact was made by supporters of this idea with Mr David W Summers, principal transport officer for Highland Council, he would be in a position to give this much-needed improvement serious consideration.
This move would show that local people and the powers that be do care about the older generation.
Leonard Grassick
Coppice Court
Grantown.
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Bonding at Cairngorm Mountain
Regarding the Snow Factory, this is yet again another missed opportunity by the Cairngorms National Park Authority’s planning committee.
What the committee should have required was a bond from Highlands and Islands Enterprise to cover the removal of this machine if and when the business closed before or after it was fully transferred into private ownership.
It is clear that even fewer private operators will be interested in the Cairngorm Mountain business with obligations like that being transferred to them.
Gordon Bulloch
Grantown.
