Pylon News (WELLS CONSTITUENCY LIBERAL DEMOCRATS)

PYLON NEWS

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Photo by permission of Mark Newman, burnham-on-sea.com

Tessa Munt, local Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Candidate, has been campaigning against the National Grid's inadequate consultation with local residents on its hugely unpopular proposals to erect huge pylons right across the Somerset countryside. The National Grid wants to run a new 400,000 volt power supply on 152 ft high pylons from Hinkley Point C Nuclear Power Station to Seabank in Avonmouth.

Tessa has written to residents living in the villages of Biddisham, Badgworth, Chapel Allerton, Stone Allerton, Ashton, Blackford & Mark, all of whom will be effected by The National Grid's proposals

Click here to read the letters

Comparisons

Tessa outside Castle Head house (one of the tallest properties in the village) off the A38 in Biddisham

Scale models of a proposed National Grid super-sized pylon, and Castle Head House

Press Release: 24.11.2009, sent to The Mid Somerset series of Newspapers

Your article "Level with the Levels" last week was aptly titled. During my two hours at the National Grid exhibition in Mark, I heard different answers to the same questions.

"Consultation", judging by National Grid's attempt, is like some ghastly timeshare sales pitch. "Please tell us which option you prefer and why?" My dilemma: Option 'A' (wrong location, ill-considered, not value for money) or Option 'B' (wrong location, ill-considered, not value for money)? In the National Grid's exercise in sham democracy, there isn't a 'none of the above' option and I want one. I object.

I also object to the timing of this consultation. Between now and the deadline of 4th January there are school holidays, Christmas, New Year and postal services disrupted by the seasonal surge of cards and letters.

This whole exercise is designed to split our communities right down the middle, setting one village against another. The time has come to stand together as one Somerset.

But many residents don't yet know what's going on. I've met dozens of local people who didn't get a letter about these proposals. That's why I'm writing to each the residents in the villages most affected by this, so they know what's coming.

Using 1950's technology for a 21st Century project is unacceptable. When the National Grid's PR spin doctors were challenged about alternatives (putting the lines underground as they do with gas; using superconductors to go under the Severn as they do in other parts of Europe and the USA; using the land along the M5 corridor which is blighted already), they resorted to threats about "the costs". But we're going to be paying the costs of whatever they do through our electricity bills for the next 60 years as they continue to pay fantastic salaries to their Board and dividends to their American and European shareholders.

But this is not just about money. The cynical National Grid - to quote Oscar Wilde - "knows the cost of everything, but the value of nothing". Its spinners will call our objections "nimbyism" and wave away the facts. These proposals will ruin our countryside, wreck our tourism, compromise forever our chances of gaining World Heritage Site status. Visitors are essential to Somerset's economy. Who will want to visit or holiday in a county whose countryside is scarred by these vast, 152 ft ugly metal towers, humming continuously and lit like Christmas trees - only all year round?

Investment in an invasion of monster pylons will seriously inhibit political will to invest in renewable energy. These pylons won't be able to deal with any of the power sourced by the Severn's tide, should the Government ever get round to making a decision to proceed. That would require a whole new set of pylons - and I don't fancy our chances of trying to overturn the argument that the new 2011 pylons become an 'existing' line which must be followed for any future extensions into the National Grid.

The power carried by the proposed pylons leaps from the existing line's 132,000 volts to 400,000 volts. Our health concerns are swept away as a statistical blip - earnest reassurance is given by the National Grid 'electricity pylons won't cause any harm to nearby residents or children in adjacent schoolrooms', and those professional critics who report a higher incidence of cancer and leukaemia near pylons are dismissed as unreliable nutters.

Infrastructure projects, if they are large enough to be taken out of the local planning process, are certainly large enough to deserve serious consideration of how best to minimize the damage to the local environment and serious investment in solutions which are acceptable to local people.

National Grid's consultation should be a consultation. It should give us all the information we need to make an informed decision. I want to be able to choose: I want to know how long the routes are, and what the real costs are if National Grid put the power lines underwater in the Bristol Channel, on land alongside the M5 corridor, underground along National Grid's favoured routes, or overland on those routes as they currently propose. I wanted to consider the options myself, but I'm denied that chance. Ultimately, I'm going to pay for this; so will my children, and their children too.

This is not a consultation. It's an imposition. Think again, National Grid and come back to us with some real alternatives.

Tessa Munt

07714 599669