A single wind turbine could transform a Highland community’s fortunes, but
at what cost to the sublime landscape, asks RICHARD BAYNES in a special
investigation
A mock-up of the proposed turbine
“I’d like to talk to you about the wind turbine.” The clipped,
anglo-accented tones of Gabby Rex ring down the phone.
The call is about something else, but she diverts the conversation to the
planned wind turbine in Coigach, just north of Ullapool, where her
8000-acre Badentarbet estate lies.
The turbine proposal is for a site above Achvraie, part of the long coastal
straggle of crofts and houses around Achiltibuie, and for 20 minutes Mrs
Rex talks about how she feels it will damage tourism, and scenery, and is
not needed.
These days, any wind turbine will generate opposition as well as
electricity. Highland communities are installing them to generate cash they
need to survive.
I love Coigach, and one thing she says next makes me curious: “It’s on
Scottish Wildlife Trust Land: I don’t think a conservation organisation
should allow it.”
The trust’s Ben More Coigach estate is 14000 acres of some of the finest
Torridonian sandstone scenery. Its central peak, Sgurr an Fhidhleir, or the
Fiddler, is a mighty wedge of rock to match the crumbling magnificence of
Stac Pollaidh across the broad glen to the north.
SWT is the lead partner in the Coigach Assynt Landscape Partnership, which
at the end of October received £3m Lottery cash “to conserve the landscape
of Coigach-Assynt”.
This is a National Scenic Area (NSA) running from just north of Ullapool
for 30-odd kilometres up the coast and perhaps the same inland: lochans and
rocky hills, fringed by sea-cliffs, coves and the lovely Summer Isles. Its
scenery matches – beats – any UK national park.
Rex is fierce in her opposition to the turbine. Equally adamant is Reiner
Luyken, a German journalist, tourism operator and something of a
controversialist who lives in Polbain, another hamlet of the Achiltibuie
cluster.
Over the phone he tells me there are plenty of objectors, saying: “You
cannot have the idea of a wind turbine in an NSA. The Highlands are
increasingly spoiled with these things, and it’s on us to preserve these
last areas that are exempt from industrialisation.
“We have put years of effort in to show this place off as it is and people
come here for the landscape. They don’t come here for a nice little
Highland community, they want this phenomenal landscape, and if you plonk a
turbine there it’s gone.”
But Coigach Community Development Company’s website and that of its Coigach
Windpower Ltd subsidiary are confident, speaking of broad community support
and a ballot giving 68% backing to the turbine idea.
The turbine could raise vital cash for the townships strung along the
Coigach coast. The community of 300 has the classic symptoms of fragility:
shrinking school numbers, ageing population, lots of second homes,
inadequate infrastructure and dependence on tourism.
The company has convinced not only locals but the SWT that it’s a good
idea, and the Mountaineering Council of Scotland and wild land charity the
John Muir Trust have decided not to object. So just how strong are the
arguments?
The best way to find out is to go and have a look so, after asking Scottish
Wildlife Trust for an interview, I head for Coigach.
Author and land reform campaigner Alastair McIntosh once wrote that it’s
easy for a journalist to enter a small community, possibly at the behest of
malcontents, win unsuspecting folks’ confidence maybe over a beer or two,
then air everybody’s washing in ways that few would want or recognise.
He was in fact writing about Luyken’s foray some years ago on to Eigg, to
write about community ownership there, which ended in controversy.
It’s a good point, but that shouldn’t stop a journalist with a genuine
interest in the place taking a look: better, surely, than a knee-jerk news
report letting naysayers excoriate a conservation body for backing a wind
farm, or ignoring it because a loose cannon such as Luyken is involved?
Luyken writes the Mail from Achiltibuie column in German weekly paper Die
Zeit, and has been a correspondent for the paper for years.
I imagined him a plump and choleric Helmut Kohl, an incomer irritated by
the un-Teutonic chaos of Highland life. At his home at Polbain, to the
north of Achiltibuie proper, I find he is slim and humorous, and has lived
here for 35 years, most of his life, working in fishing as well as writing.
His wife is from Achiltibuie and he is part of the extended family tree of
village folk, most backing the turbine.
He shows me his holiday homes, the Brochs of Coigach. The luxurious
cottages set into the hillside and clad in stone with turf roofs have
stunning views of the Summer Isles and Loch Broom.
They cost £750,000 to build two years ago and are decorated with expensive
art – I see John Bellany, and some unattractive Tracy Emin prints.
He says the quality of the place keeps them full all year round. The
turbine five miles away won’t be seen from here, but it would be seen from
nearby.
At his kitchen table he declares: “Landscape, landscape, landscape –
there’s just no doubt that’s the thing they are coming for.
“I have an objective measure for that too – from the Facebook site for the
business. Every day I put a new photo on Facebook … If I compare the
landscape photos and other photos – there’s no comparison, it’s landscape.
If I put in a photo saying that’s a real character it might get 150 views.
If I get good landscape shots I get up to 50,000 views, and 40 shares.
“From that it is so obvious that if you want to develop tourism here
landscape is the only thing that counts.”
He contests the development company’s argument about economic and social
fragility: “They always say there is nothing here and we’re all so poor,
the community is dying on its feet. It’s all a load of crap, the community
is very, very wealthy.”
For him, halting the school decline just means people having more children,
although many in the ageing population have had children elsewhere and
returned when careers and middle-aged wealth allow it.
We head out to the turbine site in his pickup and I see why he might raise
hackles: he makes personal criticisms of some of the turbine’s backers, and
I get the impression he thinks helping yourself is the only way you should
get on.
We half-walk, half wade up to the site in winter rain and sunshine. It is
starkly beautiful, a patch of glittering wet bog above the village with the
sea and Summer Isles below, and the dark cone of Conmheall – Conival – as
backdrop.
The turbine will have an overall height of 77m, and at the site the CDCC
has erected a slim 50m mast to get an idea of the wind energy available.
“I really don’t know why they think it will be OK to put this industrial
installation here,” Luyken says. “It’s all about money.” On that he’s
right, but that doesn’t mean CCDC is wrong.
From Luyken’s house I go a few yards to the home of Iain and Lesley Muir.
When I visit, Iain Muir has just stood down as founder chairman of the CCDC
and a new chair is to be appointed soon. His wife was head of the village
school: she left when lack of pupils shrank it to a one-teacher setup, and
is now establishing a pottery business.
He radiates calm; she fizzes with feeling and concern at the fragility of
the community – it seems that the school’s decline is a personal insult to her.
I am supposed to be interviewing Iain but she cannot keep silent when I
suggest the turbine is easy money. The figures are rough but Muir says £2m
would be borrowed: once the turbine is running, it could bring in £150,000
a year for the first 10 years, while the debt is repaid. After that it
could bring in £250,000 a year, with no-one actually doing anything on a
day-to day basis.
She says: “It’s absolutely not money for nothing. We’ve worked at this for
10 years of volunteer time. I was a member of the very first group that got
together as an offshoot of the community council to look at this: it’s a
massive effort from a small group of people, an incredible amount of work.”
Iain Muir explains that some years ago the local community council could
see the problems of the school, the lack of social housing, no premises for
new businesses and an over-reliance on tourism and creel fishing, and
decided to tackle them.
The development company was launched with Highlands and Island Enterprise
backing and two part-time staff.
Top priority is housing. More than half of Coigach’s houses are second
homes, but many second-home owners including the Muirs are local people who
let them as self-catering accommodation, an economic necessity where decent
incomes are hard to come by.
Neil MacKenzie, the builder working on Lesley Muir’s new pottery workshop,
is a recent arrival. He lives in what used to be a holiday home owned by
his family.
He has young children and Lesley is delighted he’s here but the holiday
home is the reason he’s been able to move in. “We just wouldn’t have been
able to buy here,” he says.
People hang on to property, adding inflexibility to the market, because
getting a house here is impossible for their children.
“The market here is a south-east England house price level,” says Iain
Muir. A nearby bungalow went on the market for £240,000 but sold for just
under £400,000. He says it is not much used.
Building a social housing scheme in the village 30 years ago brought a rush
of new blood. “But what are the chance of the local authority building more
social housing here now?” asks Iain Muir. “None. So we are masters of our
own destiny when it comes to that sort of thing.”
The concrete pier in the middle of community serves fish farms and tourism,
but it was built 100 years ago and is falling apart. There are fears it
could be closed, and Highland Council won’t have cash to repair it, while
Old Dornie harbour, where fishing boats moor, is tidal, restricting when
boats can move, and lacks facilities. Businesses are working out of sheds.
Much of this could be fixed with an income for the community from a
turbine, which would also make the place carbon neutral.
Iain Muir spells it out: “This community needs an income. We have
identified an awful lot of projects that need funding, so for us it’s a
no-brainer. If someone were to come along and say ‘we’ll give you the same
money by some other means’, we would go for it.”
He says there is no evidence a turbine will damage tourism. His wife and
other local artists sought visitors’ views: “These tourists said to me
‘Good on you'”, she says. “I asked will this single turbine put you off?
‘No’, they said, ‘It’s good to see a community standing on its own feet.'”
The site was chosen with care: it has an existing road to a water treatment
works, and CCDC is also developing a hydro-electric turbine on the site.
Iain Muir says the wind turbine will only be able to be seen from 4% of the
land of the national scenic area, and be invisible from the area’s summits.
They insist it will be seen as part of the settlement, and when I point out
it will be ten times the height of a house Iain responds that it’s only a
tenth the height of the mountain behind, and won’t be seen on any skyline.
The arguments in favour roll on: there is a 120-page environmental impact
statement backing the plan, Scottish Natural Heritage is happy with it, and
95% of objectors listed by planners at Highland Council have no connection
with Coigach.
Iain Muir says that there is one principle objector in the community and
“others go along on his coat tails.” Luyken has not pointed to any personal
animosity over the issue, but when I ask the Muirs how they get on, Lesley
indicates her anger with him and alleges dirty tricks, saying she has
contacted police about an internet stunt in which he used her picture in
what looked like a clumsy attempt at satire. “He is a master of
misinformation,” she says.
The landscape here continually distracts me here: the view to the
snow-capped An Teallach; the looming ogres of Cul Mor and Stac Pollaidh on
the road from Achiltibuie to Polbain.
Thinking about the Muirs’ points, I walk down to the beach at Achnahaird,
on the north of Coigach, and see clean, sweeping breakers with streamers of
spume, momentarily a surfer’s paradise, against heartbreakingly beautiful
mountains.
I drag myself away to head to the home of Gabby and Peter Rex, who own much
of this landscape. The elderly couple live in a comfortable but far from
grand home just outside the village.
By their log fire Mrs Rex directs me to their objections logged with
Highland Council rather than giving an interview. The objections are
similar to Reiner Luykens – they write of the enjoyment visitors take in
the landscape, call the turbine an alien machine and point to the National
Scenic Area status.
Mrs Rex does, however, want me to note what she says about SWT: “I am sure
they are going against their members’ views,” she says. “It is a
conservation organisation yet it is allowing the turbine.”
She says she and her husband are more willing than some to speak out
against the turbine, but adds: “It can get very difficult to oppose things.”
Working out which locals object to the planning application is difficult
because addresses are redacted on the Highland Council website, but the
CCDC says more than 100 local people have supported the scheme, while
around 15 have objected.
One crofter who said on the phone he is against the turbine will not speak
now because, he says, of the potential effect on his business.
After knocking on several more doors, I phone Kenny MacLennan, 61, a tenant
of Badentarbet, and a crofting assessor for a large stretch of the local
coastline.
He believes the costs of the turbine will be too high, and projected income
is over-optimistic, saying: “It’s not sustainable and it’s not green.”
But he has not formally objected: he would if it was on the same estate as
him, but his croft at Blairbuie near Reiff is about as far away in Coigach
as you can get from the mast site.
Coigach Community Hall is a hive of activity, with a crew using it to build
a set for a forthcoming feature film. They’re here for the scenery. The
hall is the base for Peter Muir – Iain’s cousin and a part-time local
development officer for the development company.
Peter Muir is passionate about the turbine project, and defensive when I
suggest it might seem inappropriate for the wildlife trust to back it.
He leafs through the 120-page environmental impact assessment, and for the
first time I see photomontages showing how the turbine would look in the
landscape.
Some are startling: one tenth of the height of the mountain, from sea to
summit, is a big chunk of a view. One shot in particular reveals what I
think is a big intrusion on the view of Achiltibuie from Polbain, an
attractive picture of a crofting community strung along the shore with fine
hills behind. With the turbine it is diminished.
Peter says: “I don’t mind the turbine in the view. It’s doing something
positive. Every time it goes round, it’s 7p earned for the community.”
In the community hall kitchen there I share tea and biscuits with older
members of the community who meet here. They talk of when Coigach had 2000
people, four schools, many more shops: the little store at Polbain, a
personal favourite, closed last summer.
They want the turbine: “You have to do something when a place like this is
struggling,” says one woman.
I head for the Fuaran bar at Altandhu, another local township, to hear
other views and yes, maybe tongues loosened by drink. But no-one among the
early-evening crowd is caught out, none to be quoted by name.
Feelings on the turbine mixed, but most agree one phrase sums it up. “It’s
a necessary evil,” says one man. “We will put up with it because we need it.
“We would probably rather not have it but nothing else will generate income
and if you want to generate green energy too there has to be some cost.”
Weeks later, I sit down to talk to Mark Foxwell and Bruce Wilson of the
Scottish Wildlife Trust.
Foxwell has managed the Ben Mor Coigach estate for more than 10 years.
Wilson is the trust’s Living Landscapes Policy Officer.
Foxwell says they back the development company: “It’s very much the way
forward and we will do whatever we can to support them in their ambitions,
partly indeed because some of the money from this [the turbine] will be
used to do environmental stuff.”
I ask them how the turbine squares with the ideals of a conservation
charity and Wilson
tells me: “The primary aim of the SWT is to do with biodiversity and not
landscape.”
Though the two areas often overlap he has to judge schemes on their impact
to wildlife and habitat. The impact on them of the turbine is “not
significant.”
Foxwell points out it there is a rigorous planning process, and although
what I have seen looks very much like wild moorland, he says: “It’s in-by
land and has a history of intense human activity … to suggest it’s a wild
landscape is incorrect.”
So will SWT members and donors, many central belters who probably love
landscape and wildlife, be comfortable with the turbine ?
Wilson explains the plan has gone through a well-developed Trust council
system where members views are reflected, and Foxwell returns to the
community benefit: “I think the vast majority of our members will probably
be unaware of the turbine but what they will be aware of is that as an
income starts being produced and things start happening on the estate and
as the school role goes up because folks can afford to live there, because
there’s something to do, and they start doing up some of the
infrastructure, that’s what our members want to hear about.”
I wonder how they would feel about it if the project was put forward by a
big energy firm or a local businessman, and Foxwell suggest that they would
be unlikely to approach SWT in the first place.
As the Trust official asked to judge the application, Wilson says he was
careful to treat it like any other application. But did they feel forced to
back the turbine by fear the community might turn against them?
Conservation organisations may not be Dutch millionaires, but are still an
outside landlord, and Peter Muir hinted to me that a conservation group
might not be immune to community buy-out.
No, says Foxwell , pointing to the Living Landscape project and its £3m
grant: “Whereas down in the central belt you manage little pockets of land
for nature conservation benefit as the primary objective, that is not the
overarching objective of owning places like Coigach. We were very keen to
work with the community in Coigach bringing as much benefit from the
landscape and land for community benefit as we can.”
There are clearly disadvantages to the turbine. Pictures of how it will
look I find worrying. The vote among local people, 68% in favour, also
makes me uneasy. A majority might vote for change, but those against have
made the not-unreasonable assumptions that something like this is
impossible – it’s a national scenic area and the ground is owned by SWT. I
can’t help feeling sorry for the Rexes at least.
From figures on the Ofgem website and talking to a wind turbine expert, I
see the level of subsidy in the turbine income: it appears between 60% and
80% of it will come from the feed-in tariff, the subsidy paid over and
above the market price of the electricity for green power, which in turn is
derived from the extra that power companies charge us.
The money is needed by the community but it is money for things which many
would feel local or national government should supply. Should communities
have to implement a controversial policy to earn it?
For the Muirs – all three – and most of the community the undoubted
benefits the project will bring make it unequivocally the right thing to
do, and the consent of conservation groups is understandable.
Highland council planners are expected to consider the plan on Tuesday
February 18. If it is built, it will do a lot of good but many people will
regret the intrusion: a necessary evil indeed.
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