Letters / How fully were health concerns investigated?
Some of you may have read my recent letter to Shetland News: Who to believe, 12 September 2024.
However, in a recent Facebook comment Dr Wills decided to correct me.
He assured me that “health had been fully investigated before the Viking Energy Windfarm got planning permission. It is where it is because the wind farm sites were chosen to minimise any health effects.”
I asked if he could clarify this for me but nothing has come back from him, so I have decided to jog his memory.
In 2010 I received a letter from [then Viking Energy employee and councillor] Allan Wishart informing me that a Health Impact Assessment is not and was not a requirement of the consent application process – fair enough.
However he does go on to say that VE did commission one. This was only partially completed and then abandoned when it was decided to review the wind farm project and to submit an addendum.
In Viking Energy’s addendum, they included a verbatim account from an article entitled ‘Wind Turbine Sound and Health Effects – an Expert Panel Review.’
The review in the addendum was prepared for the American and Canadian wind energy associations. One member of the expert panel was investigated by the College of Physicians involving his close ties with the wind industry as his area of expertise was unrelated to audiology.
Viking Energy’s brief mention of ‘flicker’ in the addendum is quoted from a 2004 report. This report is extremely out of date and not relevant to the rest of European standards where a Health Impact Assessment is an essential requirement for any new wind farm development.
Viking Energy did incorporate information relating to health issues within the Environmental Impact Assessment but not in a Health Impact Assessment.
On 30 September 2010 Viking Energy’s chair of the board of directors, Bill Manson, assured the public on behalf of the Viking Energy project that the turbines would be sited far enough away or in places that will not cause flicker effect.
He knew this as a Health Impact Assessment “has been carried out for the addendum”.
In October 2010 in a letter to Mary Scanlon MSP the then SIC heritage manager confirmed that the council had not received a Health Impact Assessment with the Viking Energy Addendum.
Well, well – Dr Wills did they rush another health assessment through then before the planning meeting in December [2010]?
Evelyn Morrison
Weisdale
