Commenting after today’s full Council meeting on the Council’s response to the Crystal Rig 3 wind farm extension application, Cllr Michael Veitch (Dunbar & East Linton) said:
“I am encouraged that none of the turbines breach the ‘Area of Significant Restraint’ identified in the Council’s recently approved Guidance for Wind Farms over 12MW. This is good news, and suggests our Guidance is making a difference.
“I recently came across a press release from the Mountaineering Council of Scotland. They surveyed nearly 1000 climbers and hill walkers, 68 % of whom said that parts of Scotland are now less appealing because of wind farms. Around two thirds had already been put off by wind farms from visiting or revisiting places in Scotland they had visited before. Now we don’t have any mountains in East Lothian, but we do, in the Lammermuirs, possess some of the most scenic hills and moorlands in the south of Scotland, which form the back-drop to the county and are much loved by locals and visitors alike.
“Yet, existing and consented developments in the area means the eastern Lammermuirs is fast becoming a large scale wind farm zone. Had East Lothian Council objected to this application, there would – as I understand it - have been a public inquiry, which is something I would have welcomed. While I commend the substantial mitigating measures which the report recommends – notably the deletion of one turbine and the reduction in size of 3 more - I cannot support the paper’s approval of the development, albeit conditional upon the mitigating measures. Crystal Rig is already too large and should not be extended further.”