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Wind farms contamination link

WIND farms have contaminated water supplies in Scotland, according to a recently released report.

Wind farms contamination link

UK consulting clinical radiologist and geohydrologist Rachel Connor submitted the report as part of opposition to Community Windpower's application to East Ayrshire Council for a 15m x 130m turbine windfarm at Sneddon Law within the boundary of the existing Whitelee Windfarm Extension.

Whitelee is the UK's largest onshore windfarm, comprising 215 turbines, built in three stages.

Connor, who qualified in medicine in 1979 and was an honorary senior lecturer in Glasgow University's medicine faculty until her retirement in 2012, prepared the report with British Geological Survey senior geohydrologists Steven Carroll and Brighid O'Dochartaigh, environmental toxicology Professor Anthony Dayan and UK Accreditation Service senior accreditation manager Janice Haines.

Connor's suspicions had become aroused when residents living near Whitelee, Europe's biggest wind farm, started suffering from diarrhoea and vomiting.

When Connor dug deeper, she found that between May 2010 and April 2013, high readings of E.coli and other coliform bacteria had been recorded. Readings of the chemical trihalomethane (THM), which has been linked to various cancers, still births and miscarriages, were also far beyond safe limits.

Continued concerns from several local residents about the proximity of Whitelee's second extension construction work and turbine formations to the shared water collection tank at Airtnoch farm, which supplies water to 10 homes along the Hareshawmuir valley, led the EAC to test private water supplies in February 2013 to "provide reassurance".

However, the testing revealed bacterial contamination of the water supply, which was a "great surprise" to Connor and her fellow residents on the lower slopes of the Whitelee plateau who had believed their water to be "clean, safe and reliable".

Anti-wind activist Susan Crosthwaite, a chef who runs a local bed and breakfast, called for an "immediate and full independent investigation" into the pollution of surface and groundwater of all Scottish windfarm developments on River Basin Districts.

A geohydrology report of the Whitelee site by Carroll concluded that many of the private water supplies emanating from the Whitelee plateau were likely to be shallow groundwater springs, potentially arising from "peat pipes" - a conclusion endorsed by O'Dochartaigh.

"These shallow groundwater springs will be particularly susceptible to surface water pollution or to soil disruption, such as occurs with any earthworks, road construction, borrow pit construction or turbine foundations, even forestry felling," the report stated.

The report said the 2 million cubic metres of peat excavated on the Whitelee site alone "may have contributed to destroying or contaminating shallow spring supplies".

Regulators said the data Connor found related to periods when specific problems were being investigated, and were adamant that the water supply that served more than 30,000 people in Ayrshire was safe.

Scotland wants to be powered 100% by renewables by 2020.

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