Rates rise for water turbines is just mad

RECENT reports of sharp rises in business rates for community hydroelectric schemes are disturbing.

Wales has a gross hydroelectric potential that is almost sufficient to cover the entire demand of the UK.

This cannot be fully exploited, of course, as the result would be a totally arid country and we should have to beg our drinking, washing and industrial process water from England.

However, if we could reach five per cent it would make Wales almost self-sufficient in electricity.

It certainly would not take all that much to get halfway there. Progress is being made. The Statkraft power station in Cwmrheidol exploits the water retained in the reservoirs beneath Plymlymon.

The generating capacity of the Elan Valley reservoirs has been increased in recent years.

The compensation flows of many other dams now pass through turbines.

We cannot, however, dam up the entire country. Many would say we already have more than enough.

Further progress must rely on run-of-the-river-schemes that divert a part of the flow over a relatively short distance. These will necessarily be numerous, with relatively small individual outputs.

We now hear that such schemes are to be faced with business rate bills rising by four to six times!

Can no-one in power recognise that such schemes are of public interest and benefit?

As such, they should benefit from favourable rating and taxation arrangements and, in many countries, this would be the case.

It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world, and we sometimes seem to live in the maddest part of it! Peter Bissmire Caerphilly