RESIDENTS of Salem in Carmarthenshire were either kept in or out of their village on Wednesday (Mar 2).
Visitors to the village were also hard-pressed to reach the village by road.
That is, if they could find it after road signs were taken down to make way for a test run for a new wind turbine.
One local resident Lynne Hillier told The Herald that the roads to Salem were closed off without any notice from Carmarthenshire County Council or Dyfed Powys- Police as a massive lorry meant for carrying the wind turbine was doing a dry run.
Mrs Hiller who spoke to The Herald by phone while the lorry was making its way through Salem said that it was ‘chaotic’.
She questioned the cost involved and asked: “How much money has been spent on digging up miles of roads, digging out ancient hedgerows and filling in roadside ditches to allow this company to site a wind turbine in an area of outstanding natural beauty?”
The Herald contacted Carmarthenshire County Council and we were told that the work had nothing to do with the local authority and its involvement was limited to its role as the planning authority.
The Herald visited the site and we noticed that County Council road signs had been taken down and left in the roadway.
Lynne said she was stopped by the police and told that she could not get back to her home.
She complained: “The Council must have spent thousands of pounds preparing the roads for this lorry and turbine. Nobody wants the turbine there other than the council and the land owner.”
Mrs Hillier further explained that she had to make a twenty minute detour and that she suffers with a condition whereby she will be affected by the resonance from the turbine. Mrs. Hillier claims that a footpath has been moved by the company despite the fact that when a local land owner applied to move the footpath it was turned down by the council.
She told us: “It looks like the council have literally moved heaven and Earth for this turbine to be sited for someone to get £45,000 per year. All the road signs have been taken down. They have made a huge mess of the roadways leaving trenches of mud. Because we have had all this rain and they have filled in the ditches, the water has been flooding down the roads.”
Local resident Mr. John Johnson told us that he watched the lorry attempting to turn onto the access road for the turbine site. He said, “The lorry could not make the turn even though they have dug out the banks on each side of the crossroads and taken the road signs down. This huge lorry had to go across the crossroads and then reverse around a 90 degree junction onto another road before facing the right way for the access road.
“The road sign telling people where to go is still on the floor and the give way sign, which should be firmly fixed has just been placed into a plastic pipe and can be lifted out easily. I suspect that is because they know that the lorry will have to do that each time it comes here.”
Road chaos, a village cut off, removeable road signs, nobody taking responsibility for the disruption: for the foreseeable future, that appears to be Salem’s lot.
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