YOUR article and leader (August 23) on the potential environmental assessment of new nuclear power stations are entirely misleading.
Any proposal to build a new nuclear power station should be reflected in the relevant development plan. This would require to be subject to strategic environmental assessment with a full discussion of the other options considered and their environmental consequences. There must be full public consultation on this assessment and an explanation of how public comments have been taken into account. In addition, any site-specific request for permission to build a nuclear power station would require to undergo an environmental impact assessment.
It is wrong to suggest that there is some loophole because the stage of the planning process which requires an environmental impact assessment does not require a strategic environmental assessment. That was never the intention. Our intention is to have strategic environmental assessment and environmental impact assessment working at different levels of the process. Strategic environmental assessment received wide parliamentary support, on the basis of strengthening scrutiny of public strategies, programmes and plans.
I think it would be disingenuous for political parties to suggest they were not aware of the range of strategic environmental assessment. There is no loophole and it is quite wrong of the Greens to suggest that there is.
Ross Finnie, MSP, Minister for Environment and Rural Development, Scottish Executive, Edinburgh.
SOJOHN A Douglas was displeased on seeing windmills spoiling the scenery for tourists at Doune as he came up the M9 to Stirling (April 19). Fair enough, but perhaps when they have "bedded in" over time they will be accepted and may even become a tourist attraction.
Did he not notice the scars across the countryside caused by concrete bridges, tarmac, interchanges and numerous road signs, which together are the M9? Did he give thought to his car, which on average will spew out four times its own weight in pollutants this year and contribute to the deaths of several thousand asthmatic people?
What of the Forth Rail Bridge? A magnificent tourist attraction or an obscene visual intrusion? At present, it is a rusty mess thanks to neglect since privatisation. Viewed from the road bridge it looks held together by giantic pieces of sticking plaster.
The Trossachs may be a prime tourist attraction, but that has resulted in all of us turning Loch Lomond into pretty much a disaster area. Try a visit on a sunny weekend!
The wider picture is no better: dilapidated farm buildings, factories (Victorian wrecks and an assortment of twentieth-century "cheapo" buildings alike), "zombie" council estates and "egg carton" shopping centres, among others.
Thomas R Burgess, 53 St Catherine's Square, Perth.
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