Letters / Please don’t ruin your beautiful islands
I don’t live in Shetland but am a regular visitor to Shetland due to the remoteness of it, the fact that you can see for miles with nothing interrupting the views, and the wildlife.
The wind farm is going to totally ruin the views across Shetland, cause untold problems for residents and will disturb thousand of breeding and migrant birds and other wildlife. No doubt a lot of birds will get caught in the blades once they are built, never mind all the wildlife that will die because of work doing on during the development.
Wind turbines cost a fortune each year to run and maintain reducing any cost benefit. They have a life span of UP TO 20 years, they can’t run when it’s not very windy and if it’s too windy, they have to turn off due to risk of fire and blade damage/flying off. Salty air reduces the turbine life span and clogs up the turbine mechanism. In Shetland everywhere is close to the sea, there’s a lot of salty air!
Here in Lincolnshire we have several small wind farms and one or two massive ones offshore. We have driven past these wind farms or looked out to sea at them quite a lot of times. We are all extremely surprised if ALL the turbines, or even most of them, are actually working. Most of the time either none of them or only a small proportion of them are actually working.
As a regular visitor to Shetland I certainly wouldn’t go to a visitor centre for the wind farm. I am much more likely to visit other areas of the islands that aren’t blighted by these monstrosities. I’m sure I’m not the only visitor that would take this stance and avoid the wind farmed areas. This means that these areas will miss out on tourists and all the revenue that they bring.
If you really want green energy, how about looking at wave/tidal energy further out to sea. It doesn’t blight the landscape and being an island nation we have plenty of waves and sea to choose from, where it won’t affect people or wildlife as much.
I cannot believe that someone with way too much power and not enough common sense has allowed this to go ahead for the sake of money.
Please, please, please don’t ruin your beautiful islands by building these horrible monstrosities.
Faith Clarke (Shetland Addict)
Lincolnshire
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