Viking rubbishes concerns about micro plastics entering water supply

Wind turbine. Photo: Oast House Archive

A Viking Energy boss has played down concerns about micro plastics being shed from the windfarm’s turbine blades entering Shetland’s water supply.

Stakeholder manager Aaron Priest told Tuesday night’s Viking Community Liaison Group that the effect on the isles water supply “will be nil”.

He was responding to a series of letters from Stuart Hill and Save Shetland, which cited a Norwegian report that claimed the turbine blades would suffer erosion and shed micro plastics every year.

Mr Priest said of the report, from The Turbine Group: “I’m not sure if that is an academic paper but I may be wrong on that.”

He added the quantities of eroded material “are absolutely minimal”, and said they had were not expecting to monitor “relatively minute quantities”.

Asked by group chairman Andrew Archer if the report was “completely wrong”, Mr Priest responded: “I think you would need to ask them about their report.”