THE Atlantic Array, along with the other wind turbine schemes that will disfigure the North Devon coast for a generation, is an affront to all those who value the aesthetic value of this green and pleasant county.

Alas, we are to be robbed of the unblemished scenery that millions of tourists flock to each year to marvel at and spend money in, yet there is a feeling of powerlessness to halt this abomination.

Only the beneficiaries of this maritime vandalism, as they stuff the proceeds of their investment away in banks, welcome the ghastly scheme.

And money there is to be made if the planning committees grant permission for the Array and every other turbine installation.

How joyless a drive around the rural lanes of Devon has become now that giant oppressive towers that dwarf Nelson's column are proliferating.

Their overbearing presence reveals much about the opportunism of human nature. An alliance has been forged of avaricious landowners keen to transform land into lucrative megawatts.

Added to that, a grisly alignment has emerged with both the cynical profiteering foreign power companies all buoyed up by a naïve, gullible green lobby whose fantasy of everlasting free energy is as far fetched as a Butlins on Mars.

All the proponents are naturally reluctant to admit that wind turbines are the least efficient and most unreliable methods of electricity generation ever devised.

To the planners' shame, children born in Devon today may never delight in looking out to an uninterrupted seascape nor will they luxuriate in the magnitude of the countryside without having to avoid the sight of a whining, whirring generator.

At least, not until they are pensioners, and what a depressing notion that is to behold, waiting for the wind farms to be demolished and our beautiful views liberated.

Wind power was once the madcap preserve of eccentric sandal-wearing vegans who drove Citroen 2CVs adorned with peeling 'Nuclear Power, No Thanks!' stickers on their bumpers.

They formed themselves into the Green Party, formerly the Ecology Party, an outfit that has endorsed and encouraged wind farms to blight every beauty spot in Britain.

And the power companies, once bitter adversaries of environmentalists, are embracing them for it.

Not surprising, given that these mad mullahs of the green world are assisting the power industry to succeed in their mission to populate every hill and dale with a nightmare vision.

In this country we have so become accustomed to the visual clutter of electronics that we hardly notice them any more. Pylons, overhead wires, Sky dishes, TV aerials, telegraph poles, phone masts and prurient CCTV cameras.

All are unattractive but necessity mitigates and tolerates their intrusion. Moreover, this street junk can easily be concealed, as is usually the case in areas of conservation in which tidy and attractive street scenes are still maintained.

Wind turbines, however, cannot be hidden. Looming over us they are the latest imposition of hideousness to be visited upon a shrinking countryside that in time will have reduced its economic reliance on agriculture and livestock to little more than tourist farms.

Unless the number of turbines is curtailed the rural scene we cherish today may in just a few short years be a forest of windmills standing among millions of photo voltaic cells, all glittering in the sunshine as farmland and pasture are transformed into vast al fresco power stations.

Here in Devon we benefit from a tourist industry that almost wholly depends on this county's contrast to the noise and bustle of towns and cities. We have dramatic scenery, glorious beaches, and in spite of the greed of developers, a landscape envied by the world in its bucolic attraction to the urban dweller seeking a haven of peace. But not, it seems, for much longer.

It is an irony that those living in towns now enjoy better access to open spaces than countryfolk. Towns these days prioritise wildlife sanctuaries and improve on parks that feature fishing and boating facilities. There are protected green belt spaces and urban farms that supply schools, hospitals and restaurants.

Those living in our own rural areas can only drive along the winding lanes that divide farmers' properties into which entry is forbidden.

The countryside is closing down, field by field, meadow by meadow and pasture by pasture, and will in time be patrolled by legions of burly men who are already sitting in laybys guarding the turbines. Nobody ever expected to see CCTV cameras among the patchwork quilt grazing land of Devon. They are there now!

Here, we will eventually mourn as Lundy Island metamorphoses into a barren rock following the Atlantic Array's construction crews' wanton destruction of habitats essential to maintain numbers of indigenous puffins, buntings, chaffinches, firecrests and endangered rare Arctic skuas.

The seabed on which the turbines will stand will be sterilised as the food sources are scrubbed away.

Elsewhere inland we will no longer be thrilled by the murmuration patterns of roosting starlings.

Rather than being sliced into a thousand pieces in the merciless turbine blades they will migrate to less hostile nesting sites.

This is progress, we are told, but it is nothing of the sort.

It is a return to the industrial revolution's mindset of brutal expansionism in which farmland is destroyed and livelihoods disrupted, all motivated by get-rich-quick profit.

Two certainties exist: there will be barely a British job created by building turbines, and secondly, electricity customers will gain nothing, not so much as a penny off an electricity bill as a benefit from those great clunking windmills clinging to hills like carbuncles on the face of Devon.

DAVE GRIFIN,

Ilfracombe.

A COMMON misconception regarding the Atlantic Array Wind Farm is that the turbines will not be visible. This is not so.

The Fullabrook wind turbines are 110 metres high and can easily be seen from Yes Tor on Dartmoor which is some 32 miles away from Fullabrook. There is photographic evidence on the internet to prove this.

The turbines that RWE wishes to site in the Bristol Channel, covering an area equal to the Isle of Wight, are 220 metres high.

They will be only 8.8 miles from Mortehoe and Baggy Point.

Obviously this equates to four times closer and twice as high as those easily visible from Dartmoor. Can people really believe that they will not notice this vast array of turbines?

RWE has photomontages on its website but strangely it does not have one taken from Mortehoe even though it was able to show this at its consultations. The only photomontage on the site within this area is from Putsborough which will be 11 miles from the turbines.

I believe this photomontage is misleading in that 50 per cent of the photo consists of the actual beach which obviously gives the illusion of the turbines being further away than they would actually be.

Wind farms do not make economic sense. Onshore wind farms shared £25 million last year to shut down as it was too windy. The payments to stop operating are made by National Grid because it cannot cope with the amount of power being fed on to the system when it is very windy.

We are all well aware how the wind blows across the ocean into the Bristol Channel so just how often would these machines even be operating? The consumer pays this compensation through their energy bills.

It is estimated that soon the additional annual cost of renewable energy per customer will be £280.

I realise there are some people who find these machines 'aesthetically pleasing'.

However, they are in the minority and I do not believe that the tourists who come to this area will find 417 turbines offshore, as well as the ever growing amount onshore, aesthetically pleasing enough to bother to return.

Lundy Island, North Devon and South Wales rely heavily on tourism and cannot afford to lose this source of income. People come here to escape from monstrous structures.

Please also remember that as well as the effect on tourism the fishing industry will be decimated as well.

This will all have a knock-on effect regarding the local economy. Add to this the devastation caused to the wildlife and marine life both on and offshore plus the noise and havoc caused during construction and it is difficult to find even one good reason to build the wind farm, unless one has shares in RWE of course.

SALLY-ANN KINGHAM,

Landkey.