jupe1407 wrote:I cycled the Incheril to Fada route as far as roughly 6 miles into Gleann na Muice, and certainly it won't be winning any beauty contests for the next couple of years. However I'm sure I read somewhere that it's scheme which will benefit the village of Kinlochewe and it's outlying properties, not just a money-maker for the estate. In cases such as this, I find it hard to have an objection to such a scheme, as unattractive as it might be for a few years. I feel it's a bit unfair for us as brief visitors to say "yeah I know you guys live here, and it's for your benefit, but it spoiled my walk a bit and shouldn't be there".
Yes fair point but the only reasons these schemes get built is because there are big profits to be made. Quite often the local communities objections are bought with the promise of improvements to roads and cheap electricity. Kind of like hush money for want of a better comparison and yes who can blame them.
malky_c wrote:
Disappearing waterfalls is interesting, and sounds like the schemes may not be properly operated. Having worked on a lot of water supply jobs in the past (for drinking water rather than hydro), I know that the maximum amount of water that SEPA will allow you to abstract from a watercourse is a tiny percentage of the overall flow, and would be unlikely to be that noticeable except in really dry periods. I'm sure some of the owners of these schemes take advantage of the fact that they are in remote places and SEPA will never check how much water they are taking, and whether they are breaching their license.
Maybe the rules are different if you are taking the water out of the burn but putting it back in further down stream rather than using it for consumption (I'm not sure). The Foyers Falls have been greatly affected by the hydro scheme in the past as have the Falls of Clyde where the electricity company used to organize spates ie natural flow over the falls for local holidays. The falls on the Aberchalder burn above Loch Mhor are due to go the same way as the ones a couple of miles along the Loch on the River E I think.
I understand we cant burn fossil fuels forever but we cant build these hydro schemes forever either, we will run out of burns eventually. Is it ok that the scheme has been built in Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park above Beinglas and possibly seriously reduced the water over the falls? Would it be okay to build a run of the river scheme on the River Dee in the Lairig Ghru also a national park which has tracks most of the way in already? I would hope that is unlikely.
I admit to using these hydro access type of tracks myself on foot and bike for ease of access and avoiding boggy land and I agree for the peak bagger they can be a great help to speed progress. Not everyone is in this category though and places like Foyers Falls and Beinglas Falls have been tourist attractions since before the munro list exsisted.
Apparently the Falls of Falloch were deliberately spared when the new hydro projects were planned but if these developments are ok in a national park I guess they can appear anywhere at all.
Below is an article I found on the scheme below Beinn Chabhair which I visited a few months ago
http://parkswatchscotland.co.uk/2016/05/12/glen-falloch-hydro-schemes-1-ben-glas/