In his latest column, John Sheard  believes the Dales should be protected from turbines. He looks at an alternative solution – harnessing the power of our rivers and streams

Please note, the opinions expressed here are John’s alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Craven Herald.

GOOD quotes are meat and drink in my trade and, in 50 years I have gorged myself pretty well. There were some, however, that were meatier than others and here is one that, although some 20 years old, probably is even more relevant today.

It came from Sir Bernard Ingham, Margaret Thatcher’s former combative press secretary, and it ran: “Any politician who gives the go-ahead for the large scale development of wind farms will be guilty of the worst environmental disaster of the 20th Century”.

Sir Bernard hails from Todmorden, just over the tops from us here in Craven, and in the early 1990s, wind turbines were beginning to sprout like mushrooms round his home town.

He was furious, not just about the damage to the classic Pennines scenery, but because he knew that such places “farm subsidies, not the wind”.

In other words, no windfarm can make a profit without huge subsidies for the installers, the power companies, and owners of the land on which they stand.

With farming in such a chaotic state, a couple of turbines can be a nice little earner, thank “you” very much.

The “you” in that sentence means you and I, the electricity customers, who fork out for this in our ever higher energy bills to the extent of £1 billion a year at present, another figure likely to soar even higher than some planned monster turbines towering over 300 feet and more above some of our loveliest skylines.

What appals me about this is that the politicians who have pushed for this massive expansion in unreliable power is that they seem to have forgotten a vital period of this nation’s history: the fact that a key part in the Industrial Revolution was played by water power.

Water powered mills were the backbone of industry here in the Dales, grinding corn as well as moving textile looms.

In the 18th Century, the River Wharfe was dotted with them from Langstrothdale to Tadcaster.

The upper reaches of the Aire and parts of the Ribble were the same. The Tempest family had a flour mill at Broughton in the 13th Century.

The fast flowing waters of our streams and rivers were ideal for such mills before the invention of the steam engine. And they were not just relics of ancient history. Until World War Two, Grassington and Threshfield were self-sufficient in electricity created by the Wharfe at the weir, still a well-known landmark a hundred yards or so downstream from Threshfield Bridge.

The point about this is that water flows are much more reliable than wind. Yes, we have the odd drought.

Water levels sink but rivers like the Wharfe and Aire never dry up. And an Environment Agency survey this spring suggested that water power could light 850,000 homes in the UK.

Yet we have the stupidity of having to pay wind farm operators millions in subsidy when there is no wind – and even more when the wind is so strong that the turbines have to be switched off to prevent massive damage.

Some politicians are beginning to understand this and there is a Private Member’s Bill going through Parliament at present (well, after they come back from their long break in the autumn) calling for the abolition of all windfarm subsidies.

It doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of getting passed into law because too many MPs love so-called “green energy” because it is so politically correct.

But they freeze with horror when you suggest – as I did recently to the Editor of The Independent – that the next windfarm should be built on Hampstead Heath in North London.

In fact the most forward-thinking people I know on this subject are pupils of South Craven School here in Airedale who have won three major prizes in a competition organised by the London-based Institute of Engineering and Technology. Their subject: how to create energy from hydro-power.

If some of our MPs understood the potential of water power as well as our school kids, our countryside would not suffer further debasement – and our energy bills could be shaved by £20 or £30 a year.