Groundwork for a Highland Perthshire stretch of the Beauly to Denny power line could soon be laid.
Scottish Hydro Electric Transmission Ltd (SHETL) has applied for permission to open a massive borrow pit to extract rock to build and upgrade service tracks for the towering pylons set to become a feature of the Scottish sky-line.
The company won the right to build the 400kv overhead line down Scotland’s spine after a lengthy and costly planning battle.
It claimed the pylon upgrade which will feature 135 miles of 50 metre high towers is vital to tap into the increasing reliance on renewable energy across Scotland.
Service tracks must first be built, meaning the extraction of material from local sites.
SHETL wants to use a 1.45 hectare area of forestry land north of Trinafour, near Pitlochry, to blast 15,000 tonnes of rock from the ground.
It would be used to upgrade existing tracks and create new ones for the towers between the A9 and Tummel Bridge.
An application before council planners states, “The upgrading of the existing access tracks and installation of the new temporary access tracks would be constructed using local supplied crushed aggregates and/ or suitable sands and gravels from either commercial quarries or extracted from local borrow pits, located in close proximity to the access tracks for the proposed overhead line.”
It states, “Material to be extracted is rock, which would require blasting, crushing, screening and processing.”
SHETL estimates two blasts a week at the site during its three to four month existence.
The site will operate from 7 to 7 on weekdays and 7 to 5 at weekends in summer months and from 7.30am to 5pm from October to March.
Because the site is smaller than 15 hectares and less than 30,000 tonnes of material is to be extracted, an environmental impact assessment is not required.
However, the company has pledged to assess any effect on protected birds including black grouse.
It admits the site is “fairly exposed” due to its high elevation. It also said a percentage of the material taken from the site will be returned following completion of the work.
The council has set a target determination date at the end of September for the application.