MOD's fears for Eskdalemuir 'array'

by DOUG COLLIE

The Ministry of Defence says it has proved the construction of a 45-turbine windfarm close to the highly sensitive Eskdalemuir Seismological Recording Station would have an adverse affect on the crucial monitoring centre, and planning permission for the project must be rejected.

A closing submission from the MoD follows a lengthy public inquiry in which Scottish Government planning reporter Claire Milne has heard from objectors and supporters in the controversial Faw Side wind farm proposals which would occupy sites in the Langholm-Newcastleton area.

CWL Energy Ltd. is promoting the Faw Side facility, and has claimed in evidence to the inquiry the impact on this largely unspoilt stretch of countryside which includes hundreds of historic sites and monuments, would be minimal. The company had also challenged the MoD's evidence concerning the monitoring station.

The Ministry's position is that Faw Side wind farm will have a significant and detrimental impact on the operation and capability of the Eskdalemuir Station ("the Array"). The MOD say the proposed development would cause the Eskdalemuir threshold (also known as the Eskdalemuir noise budget and referred to as "the Eskdalemuir threshold") to be exceeded.

The inquiry was told that as part of its obligations under the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty [CTBT], the MOD is required to keep in place seismic equipment which monitors and detects nuclear-test explosions as part of the International Monitoring System network under the CTBT. The network is part of the CTBT verification regime and consists of 321 monitoring stations, of which the Array is the only one in the UK."

If the MOD failed to safeguard properly the Array and protect it from interference as a result of wind farm development, the UK would be in breach of this international obligation to protect global peace and security.

Since it started operations in 1962, the station has detected approximately 645 P-wave signals associated with (presumed) underground nuclear test-explosions occurring up to 15,000 km from the Array. The Array has detected P waves from many smaller underground chemical explosions, for example an announced chemical explosion equivalent to 100 tons of TNT detonated in Kazakhstan during August 1998. The Array has detected P waves from all six nuclear tests announced by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea since 2006.

In the newly published closing submission to the inquiry, Ruth Crawford KC, for the Ministry, says it is necessary to set out the changing position of the applicant [CWL Energy]. 

"The changing position is relevant because it casts doubt on the weight that should be attached to the expert evidence led by the applicant; puts in proper context the suggestions made in the course of cross-examination of the MOD’s witnesses that the MOD had failed to engage with the applicant, a suggestion which, in context, has no basis and; reduces any confidence that the further investigations proposed to be carried out in the suspensive condition will provide a sound scientific basis to enable the Scottish Ministers to dismiss the MOD’s precautionary approach and instead defer to the local planning authority to assess the impact on the Array and thereafter reach an informed decision on that key issue."

Ms Crawford argues that the applicant has now departed from its original Inquiry Statement. The applicant no longer offered to prove that Faw Side could be accommodated within the Eskdalemuir threshold. 

Instead, in its Supplementary Inquiry Statement the applicant was seeking consent subject to a so-called suspensive condition. That condition was to enable the applicant to carry out further investigation of the effects of Faw Side on the detection capabilities of the Array, report on the results to the local planning authorities who should consult with the MOD and thereafter seek to discharge the condition on the basis that Faw Side would not have an unacceptable impact on the detection capabilities of the Array. 

"It is worth noting that some five years after the application for consent was submitted the applicant remains unable to demonstrate that Faw Side would not have an unacceptable impact on the Array. That inability, of course, reflects the lack of scientific certainty and can only justify that a continued precautionary approach is taken. 

"What does the suspensive condition mean? The effect of the suspensive condition is to put the local planning authorities in the place of the MOD and its international obligations under the CTBT to protect the Array. Leaving aside the likely lack of resources that may be available to the local planning authorities to properly do so, they are (obviously) not designated as the appropriate National Authority for the purposes of the CTBT."

The submission concludes: "The applicant accepts that based upon the MOD’s current predictive model Faw Side would have an adverse impact on the Array. The applicant has not addressed that objection. The MOD’s objection has been established. There is no good reason to reject the MOD’s objection."