22 OCTOBER
Documents online - Tarskavaig meeting - Advice sheets - Ponderings - Another meeting?
New documents online
Please keep checking the Documents page on the Highland Council's planning website for each application. A new one has arrived at the Loch Snizort (east) application (which has yet to be decided). See Marine Scotland adding some criticisms which is pretty damning of the Snizort application but we will find useful when appraising the Loch Eishort applications. It also has significance because several of the Loch Eishort documents (both sets) contain references to Loch Snizort and Loch Slapin, 'inadvertantly' left uncorrected after copy & pasting of documents, a routine method used by Hjaltland that nowadays routinely gets them caught out cheating (see Rob's submissions linked in next paragraph).
Rob Ware has written two magnificent documents expressing in detail Sleat Community Council's thoughts about Eishort 1* and Eishort 2, which will give you a good idea how the community is thinking and how awful the documents are quality-wise (again!) as you write your own comment letters (x2). [* Written today, so if it's not there yet, please be patient.]
Tarskavaig meeting great sucess
The meeting last night in Tarskavaig Communities Hall was a great success, attended by 45 or so people (every chair occupied, almost no room to move), some whom came from the other side of the loch and were particularly welcome. After presentations and discussion a vote was taken, which came out as everybody (other than a few abstentions) against versus one for the installation of fish farms in Loch Eishort. As you will deduce, because Eishort 1 has now gone 'live' we considered both of Hjaltland's applications together, though - please note - each will require from us its own separate letter of comment (see next item).
Advice for having your say
We have produced a couple of help sheets HOW TO COMMENT and REASONS FOR COMMENT, which you are welcome (encouraged) to download for reference. The reasons are not a definitive list and if your particular expertise enables you to introduce new comment ideas that others are not competent to address, all the better.
... ponderings
A notion that one speaker introduced to us during the Tarskavaig meeting, not thought of before in quite the same light, was that the Skye community never suggested that fish farms would be a desirable addition to the south Skye lochs, let alone invited Hjaltland Seafarms Ltd. or any other aquaculture company to set up thier business here. It was not our choice. We never considered it, for or against, until Marine Harvest's surprise onslaught of October 2012. As somebody who for the past two years has spent time, energy and, it has to be mentioned, money striving to reach a fair and sensible resolution to what I consider to be an uncalled-for invasion by big business polluters, this idea came as a revelation that has reinforced my considered opinions.
I don't put this forward as an argument against Hjaltland's applications, but it will surely remain at the back of my mind as I write my comment letters ... a job I really have to get down to now that the book HOLES: Scotland's Salmon Sewage Scandal has been written, printed and published (want a copy?), almost all of the 250 copies have been distributed and preparation for the all-important Tarskavaig meeting is over.
Briefing Meetings - If anybody who couldn't get to Tarskavaig on Tuesday would like us to hold a second briefing meeting at, say, Ardvasar or Sabhal Mor, please let us know. James Merryweather
