South Wales

Just to give you a view of industrial wind turbine developments proposed for South Wales.

The map is based on CPRWs map of DNS projects.

Grid squares are 10km x 10km.

Circles are 10 km and represent a conservative range for infrasound propagation, and a very conservative range for seismic impact.

Obviously landscape and geology will influence those although not as much as you might expect. In some areas it will reduce the effects, in others it will magnify them.

Where the circles overlap, the impacts will be greatest.

This is not addressed in planning.

The noise regulations (ETSU-R-97) are limited to the audible spectrum only. (It’s a bit like saying infra red, or X rays do not exist, or cannot harm us because we cannot see them).

There is good scientific evidence now that infrasound harms humans and animals.

WSP’s review for Industrial Wind Farm Noise points out the shortcomings of regulations and in particular concerning amplitude modulation, and infrasound. (You can Google that, and you can find links to scientific papers etc in our planning response for Twyn Hywel).

Seismic impact is conveniently scoped out of the Environmental Impact Assessment.

We would not want to live where those circles overlap, nor would we want any unstable ground such as coal tips nearby. This is a concern shared by The Coal Trust HQ emergency department, even if not sufficiently at local level.

As previously explained, we have verified this with a retired UK Geotechnical Engineer who is very concerned, and we have also consulted two international Geology Professors. We will share their findings as soon as we have them.