Wind Farm Proposals Pose Serious Threat to SENTA, Water Supplies and Rural Communities
View of Councillor Iain McIntosh Brecon & Radnorshire. 2 November 2025
Over recent months I have been contacted by hundreds of residents, farmers and business owners across this Council ward and surrounding Powys communities who are deeply worried about the scale and nature of the wind turbine developments now being proposed in Powys. Two of these projects; the Garreg Fawr Energy Park by Bute Energy, and Parc Ynni Banc y Celyn by Wind2, would sit immediately alongside the Ministry of Defence’s Sennybridge Training Area. Each proposes turbines up to 220 metres in height, some of the largest ever seen in the UK, and would fundamentally alter the landscape and skyline that define this part of rural Wales. I want to make it absolutely clear that I will continue to oppose these proposals for as long as they threaten the safety of military training, the integrity of our environment, and the wellbeing of local communities.
I have already written to the Secretary of State for Defence to ask whether the MOD considers it acceptable to place turbines of this scale immediately adjacent to a live military training zone, where low flying aircraft, helicopters, Chinooks, Hercules transports and fast jets carry out regular training, alongside drone activity and parachute drops. I have since received a response from Luke Pollard MP, Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, confirming that the Defence Infrastructure Organisation Safeguarding Team has raised serious concerns about the potential impacts of both Garreg Fawr and Banc y Celyn on low flying training and on SENTA’s operational capability. This response, while welcome, still leaves major questions unanswered about why developers are being encouraged to bring forward such proposals in these locations at all. The safeguarding importance of SENTA is well recognised in Powys County Council’s 2017 Statement of Common Ground with the MOD, and it is vital that those protections are now reinforced within the Council’s Local Development Plan.
But military safeguarding is only one part of the problem. The environmental, hydrological and social consequences of these huge industrial projects have not been properly addressed. I have been contacted by numerous residents who rely on private boreholes and springs for their household and farm water supplies, raising alarm about the amount of water that will be needed to construct the concrete foundations for each turbine.
According to the developers’ own figures, each turbine base could require in the region of 200,000 litres of water. With multiple turbines proposed across each site, the total extraction from local water sources would be enormous, several million litres. It appears this water will be taken from the local supply network or abstracted from local sources, yet there has been no assessment of how this will affect residents’ private water supplies, farm operations, or local businesses that depend on clean and consistent water.
We live in an area where many properties are not connected to the mains, and any reduction or contamination of the groundwater could have devastating and long lasting effects. Borehole yields are highly sensitive to local changes in the water table. Large scale excavation, road building, and concrete pouring on this scale risks permanently altering groundwater movement and reducing flow to private wells and springs. I have seen no evidence that the developers or the Welsh Government have carried out any serious assessment of these risks.
Beyond the water concerns, the construction phase itself would be hugely disruptive. The narrow rural lanes through Sennybridge, Llanfihangel Nant Bran, and Upper Chapel, are simply not designed for abnormal loads of this magnitude. Residents have already expressed fears about road damage, safety risks, and access issues during what could be years of construction traffic.
Another critical concern is the damage these projects would cause to the extensive areas of peatland found across this part of Powys. Peat acts as one of our most important natural carbon stores and as a vital flood mitigation system, absorbing and slowly releasing rainfall across upland catchments. Excavating turbine bases, laying access roads, and trenching for cabling across peat soils would destroy this natural carbon sink, releasing vast quantities of stored carbon into the atmosphere, the very opposite of what these projects claim to achieve.
Disturbing peat also alters surface and sub surface water flow, increasing the speed at which rainwater runs off the hills and into river valleys below. In an area already prone to flooding, this poses a serious and lasting risk to communities further downstream. The Welsh Government’s own policies recognise the need to protect peatland, yet they appear to be ignoring those protections entirely when it comes to wind farm development.
Equally worrying is the cumulative impact on our landscape and tourism economy. These hills form part of the natural backdrop to the Brecon Beacons National Park, which attracts thousands of visitors every year. The introduction of 220-metre industrial turbines across this skyline would permanently scar one of Wales’s most iconic views, undermining both the tranquillity and the economic value of this area.
I am not opposed to cleaner forms of energy, but I do not believe that onshore or offshore wind should play any part in our future energy mix. Reform UK’s position is clear, wind power is unreliable, intermittent, and cannot meet the needs of a modern industrial nation. It drives up costs, damages our countryside, and leaves us dependent on backup alternative electricity generation when the wind doesn’t blow.
Instead, we should be investing in proven and dependable sources such as clean gas, new nuclear, tidal, hydro, and other technologies that provide secure, affordable, and continuous power. These can be developed sensibly, without industrialising rural Wales or threatening essential assets such as Sennybridge Training Area.
Powys has already contributed significantly to Wales’s renewable targets. It is now time for a pause, a moratorium, on all new large scale onshore wind projects in Mid Wales until a full review is carried out on their cumulative impact, their environmental footprint, and their compatibility with vital national assets such as SENTA.
I will continue to stand with residents, businesses, farmers, and the many community groups now forming across Mid Wales to oppose these developments, to protect our landscapes, and to demand that both the UK and Welsh Governments start listening to the people who actually live here.