ANTI-WINDFARM campaigners who demonstrated outside Highland Council headquarters in Inverness yesterday were celebrating some success last night.
Around 20 campaigners bearing placards gathered outside the offices on Glenurquhart Road to voice their opposition to plans for a 20-turbine windfarm on the Moy Estate and a 31-turbine development in the Monadhliath mountains.
Protesters carried a coffin to symbolise what they see as the death of the wilderness through windfarm proliferation.
Members of the Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey planning committee agreed to refuse application for the Moy development after a visit to the site yesterday morning.
Planning officer Ken McCorquodale said it would contravene the council’s emerging policy on windfarms.
He said: “The transport corridor between the Highland capital and the Cairngorms National Park should be kept free of development.”
Councillor Thomas Prag echoed this view, saying: “We can’t protect the whole of the Highlands against windfarms but there are some areas we can protect.”
Councillor Roddy Balfour said the visual impact would be “overpowering and dominant” while councillor Donnie Kerr was also against the proposals.
Applicants Carbon Free Moy have already asked the Scottish Government to consider the scheme since the council failed to reach a decision within the statutory period of four months. The firm’s managing director, Dominic Farrugia, said the council were affording significant weight to an emerging policy which should be given little weight.
Committee members also voted to defer an application for a 31-turbine Allt Duine windfarm near the boundary of the Cairngorms National Park for a site visit early next year. Committee chairman Jimmy Gray said: “We have received a number of representations since the report was written. A number of the issues raised would be addressed by a site visit.”
Protestor Chris Townsend, of Grantown, spokesman for the Save the Monadhliath Mountains campaign, said after the meeting that he was pleased with the decision.
He added: “It was a good decision because we felt all along there ought to be a site visit. We hope on seeing the wild landscape of the Monadhliath mountains and the proposal’s impact on the setting of the Cairngorms National Park, the councillors will be left with no other choice than to object.”
Project developer Jenny Gascoigne, of RWE NPower Renewables, said the delay was “frustrating” as the application had been submitted in February but that the firm respected the council’s decision.
She added: “The main reason the site visit wasn’t undertaken was because none of the viewpoints that councillors would be able to see the windfarm from would be accessible, so extra visual projection montages were provided in advance of the meeting.”