About SVU
The Stour Valley and surrounding area is as you can see, an outstandingly beautiful area on the Suffolk - Essex border. Sadly, like many areas of the British landscape, its natural beauty is once again under threat from yet more ugly pylons.
SVU exists to oppose this despoilment of the landscape wherever it threatens, throughout the UK.
Stour Valley Underground (SVU) was established in September 2009 following a meeting of councillors from the parish councils representing the communities of Lamarsh, Alphamstone, Middleton, the Hennys and Twinstead. These are the north Essex villages that lie along the sides of the beautiful Stour Valley which Thomas Gainborough immortalised in landscape masterpieces which are now national treasures. It soon became clear the people living both sides of the Stour and indeed throughout the entire consultation area in both Suffolk and Essex had much in common and were looking to SVU to present a united front in opposing National Grids proposals which seek to further ruin this wonderful rolling landscape with yet more, vast electricity pylons. The people of the Stour valley together with those from the Brett and Box valleys vehemently oppose this and through SVU present a compelling argument that all of the power lines, both proposed and existing, should be putunderground or better still, undersea.
SVU has already amassed a great deal of evidence to support this contention. We are working to ensure that the members of these communities and the people of this region are suitably informed in order to critically assess the information presented by National Grid during their campaign to sell their proposals. Indeed SVU seeks to ensure that the people can see through what it considers to be misinformation and red herrings that divert attention from the real issues.
Stour Valley Underground has made this highly informative web site available to fully brief you on National Grid's proposals and our fulsome case for putting all of the power lines undersea and /or underground. This case details an argument that far from being an example of nimby-ism is a case that says yes, we need to upgrade the grid, yes the local distribution power lines should come down the path of the existing pylon lines, yes they should be in our back yard - underground, but......
There is a much better way to distribute the bulk electricity from the proposed new generators around the east coast and get it to London which is National Grid’s objective and that is by undersea cable. This is the 21st century solution that fits the needs of the coming of low carbon renewable energy generation, is truly in the best interests of our nation and will lead within the foreseeable future, to a totally pylon free landscape. Go to the UK Ring Main page for full details of this exciting new idea.