The TAN-8 project for wind turbines and pylons in Wales: The rape of the beautiful country 1. The biggest anti-pylon and onshore wind turbine demonstrations in Europe. 2. The biggest wind project in Britain – some 2,500 onshore turbines. 3. One of the biggest wind turbine developments in Europe. 4. The biggest ever infrastructure project ever proposed in Wales (including the South Wales mining valleys in the nineteenth century). 5. Construction of around 50kms of 150-foot steel pylons in mid-Wales alone (perhaps double if north and south Wales are included): around 300 150-foot giant pylons and 240 75-foot pylons. 6. Industrialisation and environmental destruction of some of the most pristine and beautiful landscapes in Britain and the world on an unprecedented scale – 600 square miles now in mid-Wales and at least 1,400 square miles in North and South Wales to follow. This includes some of the largest wind turbines ever built – up to 600 feet high. 7. Destruction of at least three immense forests – the Dyfnant in mid-Wales; the Clocaenog in the North; and the forests around Gwernogle in the South. 8. Proposed desecration of the beautiful Vyrnwy Valley, home of saints and the Princes of Powys from the 6 th century – akin to building pylons along the sacred Urubamba River near Macchu Picchu – yet Britain is supposed to be a developed and environmentally conscious country! Alternatively, ruination of the broad Severne Valley, with its magnificent sweep across from Powys Castle. 9. Destroying the views from three of the most famous and beautiful mountain chains in Wales – Cader Idris, the Arans and Plynlimon, also visible from Snowdon and nearby peaks 30 miles away and, later, the Brecon Beacons, Black Mountains and Clwydian range. 10. Environmental vandalism of the sources of two of Britain’s greatest rivers, the Severn and the Wye. 11. Devastation of the holiday playgrounds and main roads to the marinas of the populated West Midlands, Birmingham, Wolverhampton etc. 12. Windfalls for speculators and landowners to be taken out of the electricity bills of everyone, and in particular some of the poorest people in Britain. These proposed acts of environmental vandalism and redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich on a monumental scale are not taking place in some remote undeveloped part of the world, but in Britain, 2011-2015 – and in the name of the ‘Global Environment’! National Grid mid-Wales and Shropshire Pylon Connection Project The National Grid plans to build 150-foot high 400KV high-voltage pylons, each some 350 feet apart through one of three corridors of exceptional national scenic beauty – along the Vyrnwy valley or one of two routes along the Severn Valley to connect up a proposed 840 wind turbines to the National Grid in England. If any of these routes – respectively of 47km, 57km or 39km long – were to be adopted it would represent an act of unprecedented desecration of unspoilt countryside in two of the most beautiful valleys in Wales, and in the United Kingdom as a whole, the gateways for Birmingham and the populated West Midlands across the spectacular countryside of ‘the paradise of Wales’ – Montgomeryshire, along the A495 and the A483 to the scenic west coast of Wales, used by millions of holidaymakers every year. We are writing on behalf of the communities of the unspoilt Vyrnwy Valley. The communities of the Severn Valley, which is wider and more populated and developed around the market towns of Welshpool and Newtown, are just as uniformly opposed to the plans. 1. Climate change, energy and technical aspects In opposing the proposed pylons along the Vyrnwy valley, in particular, and along the Severn Valley, we make no judgment about the need for Britain to do everything in its power to fight climate change; we are emphatically not climate change ‘deniers’ and accept that the opinion of the great majority of scientists in this regard is probably right. Nor are we equipped to make a judgment about the usefulness of wind turbines as opposed to other forms of renewable energy in contributing to that fight – although recent studies suggest that average British turbines are running at around 20-25% capacity; they therefore require backup from conventional power stations which need to be left permanently running, thus not substituting them; they do not provide much electricity in winter in intense cold, when wind is at its lowest; they must be shut down when the wind is too strong (in Wales usually in autumn). Many break down. Manufacturing the turbines itself carry a major carbon footprint (see appendix). We note that Denmark and Germany are moving away from this kind of technology on grounds of inefficiency and cost. We observe that while a small number of large landowners and wind energy companies are benefiting enormously from the subsidies put into place to promote wind energy, the cost of the subsidies is borne by the ordinary taxpayer and to an increasing extent by electricity customers in a form of regressive taxation – pensioners in mid-winter struggling to keep warm will in effect be subsidising Scottish dukes on their grousemoors to do nothing. The concentration on wind technology seems to be crowding out other less intrusive alternative energy sources, such as undersea tidal and mini-hydroelectric projects. We do however dispute the need to build 840 turbines in one of the loveliest and most remote upland wildernesses in the British Isles that is accessible to major population centres, notably western Montgomeryshire (which should long ago have been designated a national park), close to the sources of both the Severn and the Wye rivers, two of the greatest in Britain, in the foothills of the staggeringly beautiful Plynlimon range. These will be highly visible from the great crag of Cader Idris, after Snowdon the most famous mountain in Wales, in the Snowdonia National Park, as well as in Dyfnant Forest near Lake Vyrnwy, one of Wales most famous beauty spots. We do particularly object to building giant pylons and power lines from these sources disfiguring some of Britain’s finest and most poetic landscapes. Overall, the whole development will be the largest south of Scotland, covering some 600 square miles of Britain’s most beautiful, unspoilt countryside. 2. Amenity, Scenic and Environmental Montgomeryshire as a whole is famed as the ‘paradise of Wales’ (Powys Paradwys Cymru) and for the softness of the landscape (Mwynder Maldwyn) which was sensuously moulded by glaciers in the Ice Age. The Vyrnwy valley has been celebrated throughout Welsh history as one of the holiest, most tranquil sites in Wales, and the home of Welsh kings. The Vyrnwy valley is characterised in the west by a narrow, wooded quasi-ravine between low-lying hills, before opening out onto the wider plain of Mathrafal, a flat- bottomed bowl surrounded on all sides by spectacular hills, which then narrow again under Dyffryn Hill - ‘Allt-yr-Ancr’ – ‘Mount of the Hermit’, possibly named after the saint or possibly because of its bald head, like the tonsure of a monk overlooking the Vale of Meifod itself. The vale’s originally glaciated landscape includes a number of extraordinary features: an absolutely level valley floor on which the village is sited with, on the north side, the hills of Pen-y-foel and Allt-y-Maen, which rise steeply up to above 1,000 feet, and on the south side the lower Broniarth Hill with classical ice-age moraines on its summit, rising just as steeply up from the plain. On both sides there are ancient woodlands dating back many centuries, although there are also some more modern conifer plantations. The river at this point, after its junction with the Banwy, is itself remarkable, with its tributary streams (one under an ancient bridge by the church), meandering in classic oxbow style across the southern side of the valley, creating on its leisurely course down the flat-bottomed valley of gentle green fields and hedgerows below steep hills an almost hypnotic haven of peace, calm and tranquillity that has attracted not just poets through the ages but painters of the calibre of Paul Nash and John Wynn Harvey. These lovely hills frame not just the church but the whole village: most people that move to Meifod do so on account of the scenery alone. The landscape is small-scale, narrow and unique, not rugged, enhancing its beauty. It is a famously beautiful spot. A mile beyond Meifod, the valley mutates into one of rolling, even smaller hills criss- crossed by a patchwork of fields and hedges, eventually flattening out by the great protrusion of Breidden Mountain, where Caractacus is said to have made his last stand and which still hosts the commemorative pillar to the eighteenth-century Admiral Rodney on its summit, to reach Shropshire and the English border. Going in the reverse direction, in the space of just a few miles, the valley transports hundreds of thousands of British visitors in search of rural beauty or the sea from the flatlands of England through a spectacular green valley and hillscape and then on to the foothills and passes of the Cambrian mountains before they reach the lovely coastal resorts of Aberdovey, Tywyn, Fairborne, Dolgellau and Barmouth. Along the valley and its surrounds, apart from Meifod, are the picturesque villages of Llanerfyl, Dolanog, Pontrobert, Llanfair, Careinion, Llansantfrraid-ym-Mechain, Llanfechain, Guilsfield, Four Crosses, Ardleen, Llandrinio, Criggion, Crew Green, etc. In the 1960s an attempt to flood the valley for a reservoir was stopped because of its outstanding historical and landscape value. In the early 1970s, when Manchester University attempted to build a radio telescope in the Meifod Valley linked to its Jodrell Bank complex, this was turned down after evidence from the celebrated landscape architect J.