Shropshire Council will object to rural pylon plans
Wednesday 8th June 2011, 3:16PM BST.
Shropshire Council is to object to plans which could see pylons put up in rural areas. Officers will say that if cables connecting windfarms in Mid Wales to the National Grid pass through Shropshire they must go underground.
Councillor Mal Price, Shropshire Council’s cabinet member for planning, said: “Shropshire Council recognises that National Grid is required to connect new windfarms to the network.
“However, Shropshire is a rural county where the attractive rural landscape character makes a significant contribution to the visitor economy.
“The impact of a 400kv overhead line connection is considered to be significantly detrimental to this and Shropshire Council would object on these grounds to any overhead line solution.
“We know local people do not want to see pylons and overhead cables and nor does the council.”
The council’s full proposed response, which cabinet members will be asked to approve, says: “Shropshire Council considers that routes north should be re-evaluated and that the promoters should provide further evidence for how social, economic and environmental constraints of alternative route corridor options and sub station locations have been assessed.”
National Grid expects to submit a planning application at some point next year.
Hundreds have objected and busloads from Powys recently went to protest at the Welsh Assembly.
l Tourism – See Page 6
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let them put pylons up not having my electric bill go up because they have had to spend 10x as much to install underground making the roads etc worse than they already are.
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I am trying to figure out is this a wind up comment from Dean, or one from an idiot who is bothered more about his electric bill going up by a few quid, than health concerns , property prices,and a blot on the landscape.I would also add his bill would still go up anyway as where does he think the compo money is going to come from?.
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Glad to see Shropshire Council is going to be firm on this. When you think that about the large diametre liquid petroleum gas pipes that go underground from Milford Haven to join the national gas network – the National Grid can surely lay smaller diametre electricity cables and preserve our rural countryside and visitor economy from these invasive pylons.
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Dean, it’s not the cost of putting the power lines underground you need to worry about; what’s already put your electricity bill up by more than £35 over the last three years is the massive subsidy paid to “green” energy suppliers. It amounts to £1.04 billion this year, and it’s rising. It all comes from your pocket and mine, and it means that a big wind turbine can make £400,000 per year for its owner, half of which comes from our electricity bills. If the (already rich) generating companies didn’t get that massive subsidy, they wouldn’t put up a single turbine. Stopping the subsidy would thus solve the power line problem at a stroke, because the pylons simply wouldn’t be needed. And we’d get cheaper electricity. And we wouldn’t notice any problem with our national generating capacity, since the wind farms produce only about 0.05% of our total supply (and nothing at all in the cold days in january when there’s often no wind at all).
Perhaps our brave Government,looking everywhere for cuts in useful services, might turn their attention to these useless subsidies, and do themselves, us as consumers, the productive parts of our national economy, and our precious landscapes a favour. Or is that too simple for them to understand?
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