I READ the recent story of the Whittlesey turbines dangerous ice shower with interest. On the September 12 an R Taylor e-mailed your letters page to highlight this risk (copy attached) and I wonder why no involved with the project seems to have shown this

I READ the recent story of the Whittlesey turbines dangerous ice shower with interest.

On the September 12 an R Taylor e-mailed your letters page to highlight this risk (copy attached) and I wonder why no involved with the project seems to have shown this same level of foresight?

Someone could have been very badly injured or killed by a risk so obvious that a member of the general public was highlighting it in your paper three months before this incident happened.

It also strikes me that if the calculations for this aspect of the turbines design are wrong how much credence can we give to the other technical input on the project?

The project will have made assumptions on the generating efficiency of the turbine and the number of generating hours it will achieve per year. If these are overly optimistic the project costings will be invalid.

As tax payers we are all heavily subsidising these installations and I for one would like to see an independent audit of this and other installations so we can see how they are performing against the payback promised in the planning applications.

Even before this incident I have read the efficiency if these turbines drops in winter - studies have said output from turbines can fall to just four per cent of their maximum output in January - the coldest month of the year which is when we need the most power.

ALAN BESSANT

Via e-mail