Coire Glas: environmental questions unanswered

It seems that Scottish Canals has accepted an agreement with SSE on the Coire Glas pump storage scheme (not classified as a renewable) that can be financially lucrative to it (Lochaber Times, October 18).

Scottish Canals would otherwise have been expected to make representations on SSE’s plans to extract more than 23 million tonnes of water and discharge the same every day to Loch Lochy. This has a consequent risk of bank erosion and scarring on the shores of Loch Lochy, with acknowledged effects of many and rapid fluctuations in loch level on water plants and aquatic invertebrates.

Of course, much of the incredible four million tonnes of rock will still have to be taken out by thousands of lorry transports as well as by canal.

There are still many unanswered questions: how does SSE square the fact that it will get paid twice, for generating the electricity from the wind farms and also from the pump storage scheme? How much will it recompense the community (businesses and home owners should get personal compensation for massive environmental disturbance and it will take 20 years for landscape recovery)?

How exactly will the four million tonnes of rock be disposed of and how is SSE going to ‘remodel’ the landscape at Coire Glas, as it so nicely puts it? Also, how will it will take in 1500 Mw of power continuously to Coire Glas pump storage and also get the electricity out?

I wonder if the customers of Scottish Canals will be pleased to see miles of huge pylons from half way up Loch Lochy on the west bank to Fort Augustus. More than one million visitors each year passing on the A82 will see these blighting pylons and also walkers on the Great Glen Way. If SSE does not insist in making this an underground electricity connection to Fort Augustus, then it will be an eyesore in the Great Glen. Jim Treasurer,

Friends of the Great Glen Environmental Group, Fort William.