Scandal on the Braes Environmental law and the River Teith Special Area of Conservation a report by FRIENDS OF THE BRAES FRIENDS OF THE BRAES This report is published by FRIENDS OF THE BRAES,a politicians) that there were no significant pollution liaison group set up in the light of the increasingly issues associated with the project. This paper apparent environmental impact of the Braes of argues this was not the case. Doune wind farm. The record presented here shows that, even if The initiative to establish the group was taken by they were unable or unwilling to do much about it, neighbours, tenants and riparian owners of the staff from SNH, SEPA and Stirling Council were River Teith Special Area of Conservation (SAC). increasingly concerned at what was happening on They had, for some time, been individually the site. corresponding with or sending reports to the It was time to go over official heads and take the statutory authorities about problems with the case to a wider audience. FRIENDS OF THE BRAES, project without satisfactory response. launched at a meeting of well wishers on 24 One of their number, exasperated by what he September 2006, decided to ‘go public’ about felt was official complacency, submitted a what was going on and to explain its political complaint in April 2006 to the EU’s Environment context. Commissioner. It alleged significant breaches of It commissioned this report, which describes EU Directives in the Scottish Executive’s research conducted by its members into the management of the project’s planning cycle and is relationship of the project to the River Teith SAC. currently being investigated. (That it does not examine ornithological or other In August, he submitted a report to the statutory issues does not mean that these are unimportant.) bodies called Environmental issues at the Braes of It also commissioned a study of site waterways Doune wind farm, a largely pictorial account of by Stirling University’s Centre for River pollution incidents affecting the River Teith and its Restoration Science. The results are summarised tributaries. herein. Including professionally photographed aerial The group aims to breach what it sees as a wall shots and commentary from freshwater fisheries of silence surrounding the project with the express expert Dr Derek Mills, it was passed to politicians aim of containing the damage already done. as well as the statutory bodies, the first time the It also hopes that its work will assist those case had been taken into the public domain. assessing comparable projects elsewhere, in The authorities ignored the evidence it Scotland or further afield, who are being treated presented and continued to insist (and tell with disdain by the authorities. Graphic by Ron O’Donnell © FRIENDS OF THE BRAES, March 2007 Friends of the Braes can be contacted at [email protected] or on 01786 842282 Cover: The developer’s Environmental Statement noted that ‘The access track has also been relocated from a route alongside the Garvald Burn to a route approximately half a kilometre further east, to reduce potential hydrological impacts’. The photograph shows that it comes much closer than 500 metres to the Garvald Burn (bottom left) at the worst possible spot: on top of a steep bank next to a sandstone quarry with a system of culverts and straw-lined settlement ponds connecting the quarry to the burn. The burn is part of the River Teith Special Area of Conservation. 9 July 2006 The decision to use the quarry to store excavated peat appears to have been a late change of use to which neither Scottish Natural Heritage nor the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency objected. (#84, 91) The drainage has reportedly since been modified – see page 20. Efforts to control pollution at another quarry/peat dump equally close to the burn sited to the north have been even less successful – see opposite. Contents Executive Summary 4 Introduction 7 The Braes go to Brussels 9 Did the Scottish Executive comply with the EIA Directive when considering the application? 12 Did the Scottish Executive comply with the Habitats Directive when considering the application? 14 Have the designated authorities ensured the integrity of the SAC? 22 Has the SAC been damaged? 28 Has the EIA Directive been properly transposed into Scottish law? 30 Conclusions 31 The report relies on documents in the public domain or provided under FoI rules, on site visits and on interviews, correspondence and meetings with stakeholders, statutory bodies, etc. (The developer did not reply to correspondence, as is its right.) Appendices, source documents and additional photographs can be found on www.friendsofthebraes.org. Shorter documents are in Annex 12, identified herein as (#999), longer ones individually (annex n). Personal details have been deleted from internal communications. 9 January 2007. Polluted run-off from a borrow pit entering the Garvald Burn (see p 6, p 18 and the ECoW’s report for November 2006, annex 9-11.) Site contractor McAlpine’s Alfred Method Statement for the quarry noted that: The prime purpose of daily monitoring, particularly on an environmentally sensitive and high profile construction project such as Braes of Doune, is the early detection and/or prevention of environmental disturbance or damage. The monitoring regime establishes procedures whereby corrective action generally ensures that the same problems do not re-occur or the likelihood of occurrence is at least substantially reduced . 3 Executive Summary AIRTRICITY APPLIED to build a 50-turbine wind protected area and, if there is any ‘reasonable ‘farm’ on the Braes of Doune, near Stirling, in 2002. scientific doubt’ on that score, planning consent The site was to prove contentious not only on must be refused. account of its visual prominence but because of its A purportedly new peatslide risk assessment peatland habitat and its proximity to the River Teith. submitted after consent was only a re-hash of the old This had recently been designated by the one and did not rely, as the Directive requires, on the European Union as a Special Area of Conservation ‘best available scientific knowledge’. to protect important populations of salmon and The risk has never been properly assessed even lamprey. though it was known to be serious: at a hitherto undisclosed meeting with the Executive in March EU Directives breached 2005, the developer agreed to drop 13 turbines from The EU’s Environmental Impact Assessment the scheme, all sited on deep peat. Directive stipulates that any significant The peatslide contingency plan is shown to be well environmental risk must be thoroughly evaluated as below standard and reliant on a technique that failed early as possible in a planning cycle and that the at Derrybrien. public as well as designated bodies such as SNH The authorities made the final or ‘implementing’ must be consulted on them well before consent. decision on the basis of a political and commercial Early in 2004, news emerged of a destructive compromise, not a robust scientific judgement. peatslide at a wind farm at Derrybrien, Co Galway, This is not permitted under European a site also featuring deep peat soils and nearby environmental law. protected waterways. Probing alleged planning In April 2006, a local conservationist complained irregularities, the EU’s Environment Commissioner to the EU’s Enviromment Commissioner about called it ‘an environmental disaster’ and began legal these planning breaches. He also argued that the action against the Irish government. EIA Directive has not been properly transposed into Shortly after, the Scottish Executive called on Scottish law. The complaint is being investigated. Airtricity to assess the risk of a similar event on the Braes. Expert advice was that the assessment, which Inadequate protection downplayed the risk, was inadequate. As construction proceeded, competent observers Without consulting either the public or SNH on reported widespread pollution of hitherto pristine the issue, the Executive consented the project and waterways to SNH and SEPA. The response was at explicitly postponed full assessment to a later date. best indifferent and at times dismissive so they This breaches the EIA Directive. circulated a pictorial report and expert commentary The Habitats Directive lays down strict rules for (Environmental Issues at the Braes of Doune). developments that might damage areas like the Politicians who followed up this report were River Teith. In short, a project must not damage a assured that there were no significant ecological issues Acronyms used or quoted in the text: AM Alfred McAlpine Ltd (site contractor) FoI Freedom of Information regulations CRRS The Centre for River Restoration Science LUC Land Use Consultants Ltd (A Stirling University research group) (provided ECoW services to the project) cSAC Candidate SAC (see text) SAC Special Area of Conservation ECJ European Court of Justice (An EU conservation designation) ECoW The Ecological Clerk of Works SEPA Scottish Environmental Protection Agency EIA Environmental Impact Assessment SNH Scottish Natural Heritage EU The European Union WPM Water Protection Measures 4 on site and that SEPA’s rigorous supervisory regime week pilot study using both intensive and incident- showed that the acknowledged discolouration of driven sampling strategies suggested significant waterways was (‘surprisingly’) benign. pollution arising from construction activity and that This is shown to be untrue in that: its effects could be prolonged. Although broadly in line with the ECoW’s later ! records reveal that enforcement staff, while reports, this runs directly counter to SEPA’s data. unwilling to take effective action or tell politicians It is an indictment of the planning and supervisory of their concerns, had complained about several regimes that members of the public should have had pollution incidents over preceding weeks. to invest so much time and spend literally tens of ! analysis of SEPA’s sampling strategy shows it to thousands of pounds of their own money to try and have been perfunctory, poorly designed and get the Scottish Executive to fulfill its international unlikely to focus reluctant official minds.