Wild Land News no 68, Spring 2007

Beauly - Denny Transmission Line Article

"Beauly-Denny is the thin end of a very thick and ugly wedge - a wedge of power lines and wind factories - a wedge that is already dividing Highland communities within and between each other, a wedge that will split up the magnificent Highlands that all good Scots cherish until only meaningless fragments of their former sea-to-sea glory remain."

With the Public Inquiry now under way, SWLG David Jarman has submitted a 16,000 word precognition on behalf of the Beauly-Denny Landscape Group which comprises six national organisations. The following is a summary of its main points.

Pylons make a gruesome foreground to the hills, such as here at Glen Strae, and the proposed line would open up the potential for further industrialisation of the Highlands.
Photo:John Digney

Section 1 CONTEXT - SCOTLAND'S MOUNTAIN LANDSCAPE

The Highlands are internationally recognised as an exceptional mountainous landscape. They merit protection in their entirety against large-scale intrusions. Designations such as NSAs and National Parks exclude many important ranges and scenic landscapes. Landscape needs to be rated as highly as our cultural and wildlife heritage.

Scotland's mountain landscape (essentially north of the Highland Boundary Fault) is seen, visited, explored, and understood as an indivisible entity, and that damage to any part damages the whole. . This entity is today widely perceived by

visitors
countless publications,
general recognition of 'The Highlands' as an umbrella term, covering the Western Highlands; 'the Grampians' the Great Glen & 'The Cairngorms.
recognition of 'The Munros', as shorthand for all the major mountains extending across most of the Highlands (and Islands)
the popularity of the annual coast-to-coast trek, spanning the Highlands.

It is both invidious and dangerous to designate selected parts of the Highlands as more worthy than others. "Boundaries are the enemy of good planning' because as soon as a line is drawn on a map, it creates the impression that the area outside it is fair game. Nature, tends to work in shades of variation, and only sometimes offers clear and obvious boundaries for planners.

In Scotland, the core of the Cairngorms clearly merits top-level designation but the western and southern boundaries lack landscape distinction. Of particular concern for this Inquiry is the landscape illogic of including the Drumochter-Gaick passes and adjacent plateaux and rounded summits, while excluding the vastly more dramatic trench of Loch Ericht) and more impressive and important Ben Alder massif.

Recent moves are to give statutory force to National Scenic Areas (NSAs).which appear at first glance to cover a large proportion of the more mountainous and rugged coastal areas. They turn out to omit areas which no hill walker would regard as second-rate.

Hill walkers would find it invidious to have to draw any arbitrary line and say that those mountains falling below Munro level are unworthy of protection and can be sacrificed to the exigencies of development.

The whole of the Highlands should be recognised as a National Treasure and accorded a high degree of in-principle protection against despoliation. The whole of the mountain area embracing Munros, the key lower mountains, the scenic coasts, and their settings and approaches, should be recognised as a collective entity meriting protection as a whole considerably greater than the sum of its parts. This should not and need not be defined by a sharp boundary, but rather by a broad brush. It is encouraging to see decisions now being taken primarily on landscape grounds where the site is not within a special designation.

Section 2 LONG-TERM ATTRITION OF HIGHLAND LANDSCAPE QUALITIES AND PERCEPTIONS OF REMOTENESS AND TRANQUILITY

Sgurr Eilde Mor in the Mamores. Scotland's mountains may be relatively small, but it is their wild character compared with over-developed ranges elsewhere that defines their international appeal. Photo:John Digney

The Highlands are small as mountain ranges go, and have only a limited capacity to absorb large-scale developments without compromising their perceived remoteness and tranquility. Large sacrifices have already been made. A further wave of intrusive 'renewable energy' developments takes visual impact to a different scale again, and must be appraised in the light of the already heavily-debased and fragmented landscape resource.

During the last century, the Highlands have lost a very large proportion of their 'inherent' landscape qualities, partly been by slow and imperceptible attrition. The Highlands were 30 years ago still markedly 'wilder' than anywhere in southern Britain. Since then a long catalogue of encroachments and debasements has taken place. This has important consequences for how the Highlands are perceived and experienced.

Thirty years ago, the Highlands seemed, to a new arrival from the smaller mountains of South Britain, vast - it was possible to work gradually northwards, range by range, with the end far distant in space and time. Scotland is a small country, and that the Highlands are but a fragment of the original Caledonian mountain chain, puny in scale if not in character by comparison with world ranges. The Highlands are not a limitless scenic resource, which can be shaved away time and again to satisfy this or that commercial demand or public exigency.

The Highlands are already too degraded. Enough sacrifices have been made. The rate of attrition of Highland landscape quality is such that before long it will be very difficult to find any remnants free of industrial-era intrusions.

Section 3 WHO ARE "WE"?

To what extent can I reasonably speak on behalf of

Landscape groups
Hillgoers
Highland residents
Residents of Scotland
Visitors from further afield?

Why is their profound concern for the landscape of the Highlands unlikely to be directly expressed but needs to be voiced via a tacit collective mandate?

Inurement to insidious degradation is the greatest threat to any environment, as with global warming.

This 'we' is an extraordinarily broad and impossibly diverse spectrum whose love of Highland landscape deserves to be represented to this Inquiry.

Section 4 WHAT DO WE MEAN BY 'WILDNESS' AND 'REMOTENESS'?

We experience the Highlands as 'wild' to greatly varying degrees, depending on our physical capabilities, our experience, the weather, the season, the presence or absence of other people, our special interests in nature, and so on.

Remoteness is likewise a relative concept. Nowhere in Scotland is 'remote' if you can afford to hire a helicopter, and very few parts are if you have permission to use an ATV. Arguments over what counts as wild or remote are a distraction. All the Highlands possess these qualities in varying degrees at different times. Trying to define such areas only exposes everywhere to greater threats. What matters is people's perceptions. If the Highlands are widely valued and promoted as the place to get away from it all, they have to remain 'different' and unsullied. Remote areas visited by few people may be just as highly prized as popular destinations.

The government recognises that 'wildness' exists and deserves safeguarding. As soon as attempts are made to define it we inevitably lose some of it, and worse we can expose it to greater risks.

Section 5 LANDSCAPE IMPACTS OF THE BEAULY-DENNY PROPOSAL (B-D)

Direct intrusion of B-D This is one of the largest and most intrusive single projects ever proposed in the Highlands. The towers, insulators, and wires are leadenly conspicuous, and their utilitarian design compounds, not alleviates, dullness and bleakness.
My concern is with the impact of the route as a whole. Deviations or undergroundings are not the answer, they are mere tinkerings. The route traverses the geographical heart of the Highlands, and runs close to several of the main routes followed by visitors. It will be an unavoidable presence on many journeys into the hills and tourist circuits. Yet it contrives to avoid the vicinity of National Scenic Areas. To wound one part is to wound the whole. The list of affected areas is long, a cross-section of the Highlands.
Indirect perceptions of B-D as an intrusion B-D will be seen by many residents and visitors as symptomatic of the progressive wholesale 'industrialisation' of the Highlands, which has until now been largely confined. The unprecedented volume of protest cannot be dismissed as 'nimby'. It is an indication of deeper concern that if this is allowed, the ramifications will be unending. It is not possible to treat B-D as a one-off, and even people who might find it relatively bearable in itself will think that 'if they can allow that in the heart of the Highlands, there's no stopping them'.
Wind energy installations within the Highlands facilitated by B-D One of the main justifications for B-D is to open up the potential for onshore wind energy in the Highlands, particularly in a broad corridor along the route, and further north and west by extensions and feeders. It is thus wholly germane to this Inquiry to consider the landscape impact of large-scale wind installations in the mountain areas.
Wind generators are, especially for hill goers, intrusive, requiring to occupy high ground and skylines, densely clustered together so as to consume large areas of land as against narrow ribbons, and (usually) eye-catching and unignorable by virtue of their motion.
They require a lengthy access road and a web of tracks to each turbine site. The tracks are built to a high, semi-permanent standard, required for continual maintenance access. They will thus not blend back in readily. We do not believe that they will generally be removed after expiry of turbine life, whatever planning conditions and restoration bonds may exist, as either planning consent will be readily obtainable for renewal of turbines, or landowners will find other 'agricultural' or sporting uses for them which are unlikely to be resisted.
Additional power lines across the Highlands paralleling and feeding to B-D If B-D is constructed and its capacity is taken up, demand will arise for additional capacity in order to further tap the renewable energy potential of the Highlands. The existence of the existing B-D line is being presented as paving the way for a much larger line across the Highlands along a similar route. By extension, if new B-D is approved, the principle will have been laid for successors.
The maze of possible routes considered serves to demonstrate that there is no way for a high-voltage transmission line to cross the heart of the Highlands without inflicting great damage on its landscape and Scotland's scenic heritage. A 'Wellsian' intrusion around the next corner, in every other glen, is the worst of all worlds. An entirely overground transmission line will be seen by all travellers up and down the A9 and main railway for many miles, and that it will cross the main gateway to the Cairngorms National Park.

Section 6 ECONOMIC-ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF B-D AND CONSEQUENTIAL DEVELOPMENTS

Government policies for national and regional economic development have a bearing on this proposal. I support the principles of sustaining local economies and of securing economic benefits to Scotland and especially its less-favoured areas. A proper evaluation of the full range of economic benefits and disbenefits of the proposal would be at least matched if not outweighed by the economic benefits of alternative arrangements such as those outlined in the next Section

Section 7 THE STRATEGIC ALTERNATIVES TO BEAULY DENNY - A LANDSCAPE OVERVIEW

The proposal is not predicated on the needs of the Highlands, which should be capable of self-sufficiency in renewable energy. If the Highlands and Islands are to contribute large-scale renewable energy to the rest of Britain without sacrificing their landscape heritage, a viable alternative with minimal adverse landscape impacts appears to exist in tapping the abundant off-shore potential, linked by a subsea cable system off the east-coast. Possible strategic alternatives include:

'marine hydro' generation (wave/tidal/ocean stream) as prime baseload source
offshore wind as secondary contribution
subsea cable transmission to the main centres

Great climate threats do not require great landscape sacrifices

In my view:

The present B-D proposal emerged as the easiest conventional way to meet an identified need, using conventional technology, and with a conventional attitude to the landscape of Scotland as a subordinate consideration capable of absorbing ever more intrusive exploitation.
The proposed route, while the least-worst of all possible overland options across the central Highlands, nevertheless has direct and indirect impacts on and consequential implications for the landscape so adverse as to be irreconcilable with its safeguarding as an entity for posterity.
The B-D proposal was a product of short-term imperatives within a particular set of financial incentives, targets, and management regimes which we will regard as sub-optimal, flawed or transient.
An alternative offshore/subsea system is capable of achieving the same overall purpose, with substantially greater benefits and future potential, can be implemented expeditiously with existing or readily-attainable technology, and with minimal adverse landscape or other impacts.