#greenlink interconnector

I'm really sorry to be talking about this again, but someone sent me a "Skepchick" video on youtube pushing back on the debunking of the Greenlink/Dobby's Grave story. That is, this youtuber thinks the pipeline's route was changed in response to HP fan outcry after all, and we're all overly cynical clowns for believing some randos on reddit and substack. I think this youtuber is pretending that "scorn for reddit" is a valid substitute for "actual support for your arguments".

The youtuber's arguments are:

1) You're really believing some rando on Redit? A: no, I read the argument of some two randos on Reddit, and read the planning documents they linked, and thought their arguments made sense. It doesn't look like the pipeline's intended route went through the Dobby memorial at any point between 2012 and 2021.

2) Simon Ludlam doesn't sound like he's joking on the podcast. So you think he's lying, for clout or something? A: no, I think he shared (as the rando substack put it) "a pub anecdote that’s grown in the telling". I think this was a funny but unimportant thing that happened years ago, and when Ludlam was telling the story he either got his wires crossed by accident (happens to me all the time) or exaggerated for comedic effect.

3) The pipeline DID go through Dobby's grave, according to Simon Ludlam on the podcast. Here's the quote that proves it:

My colleague Tom, who, he works in all the permitting, said we're going to have to respond to these calls. And I said well, Tom, I'm super busy. And he goes, no no, we really have to respond to this. I said well Tom, what are they on about. And he said, well, look, apparently we're gonna go through Dobby's grave. [Some back in forth in which Ludlam doesn't know who Dobby is]. You pointed out very clearly where his grave was and that the cable's gonna go directly through it. And I said, well, he's a fictitious character, in a ficitious book, the whole thing's fictitious. What are you talking about? No, he said, it's very very serious. And it was serious. It was serious. So we got back to the planners, and we discussed exactly how to reroute the cable so we wouldn't go anywhere [near] to Dobby's grave.

A: We all agree that Simon Ludlam said that on the podcast. I even believe that Ludlam pointed at Dobby's grave in the news segment (hence the phone calls). However, the Reditors and Substacker (and I) think that Simon Ludlam MADE A MISTAKE IN 2018, because the planning documents contradict him. It's really plausible that he pointed at the wrong direction, or even was pointing at the right direction from his perspective but it looked like the wrong angle from the camera's. He did not even know the memorial was there, he had no reason to be super precise when pointing at a the dunes above the beach.

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Meanwhile, the redditors' main argument is that the cable was always intended to go under/through the north end of the beach, and it still does, so it wasn't moved. (Dobby's grave is near the south end of the beach.)

Here's a 2012 planning document, examining several possible landfall locations for the interconnector cable. It's very preliminary, doesn't even lay out a route for the cable, but it does say (pg. 43 of the pdf) "The preferred landfall to the south of Milford Haven is at the northern extent of Freshwater Bay West. If the landfall is located at the northern end of the beach the nearshore route can positioned just outside the extent of the Castle Martin Firing Range." This is the map it gives (pg. 46):

For comparison, here is where Dobby's grave is according to google maps tonight (which I've verified by comparing this trip report with google streetview traversal along the beach):

Then the BBC Wales news article & supposed HP fans calling in happened in 2018. Here's a planning document from 2019, which addresses archeological sites along the planned route. With Google Maps zoomed out for scale (pg. 13 of the pdf):

And here's a Marine Mammal Mitigation Plan from 2020 (warning: link downloads a pdf) which is less detailed but clearly shows the cable surfacing at the northern side of the beach, again with google maps for scale (pg 4 of the PDF), again with google maps comparison. It's hard to tell with the shape of the red place marker, but again I think it's clear that the planned route goes north of Dobby's grave.

One thing that becomes clear when you actually read these planning documents is how many other REAL CONCERNS the planners had to address. Just in my paragraphs above I mention noise disturbance to marine mammals for the underwater section and disruption to prehistoric archeological sites on land. There's also commercial traffic coming out of the Pembroke's harbor, a military firing range, and concerns about disturbed sediments from the underwater construction causing bacterial blooms near the beach, and intersection with older undersea cables. It's very plausible that adjustments were made to the route as a result of these factors-- but it also seems clear that none of these adjustments moved it south as far as Dobby's grave, at least not in any of the publicly released versions of the plan. It's ALSO very plausible that HP fans called in with concerns about Dobby's grave as a result of Ludlam's TV segmant (Or this 2018 BBC article which just said "at Freshwater West beach" without being more specific). But the youtube video isn't "debunking" anything by pointing that out -- we all agree that the phone calls are plausible!! The redditors think (and I agree) that the hypothesized phone calls didn't change the route of the cable.

Here's the comment by u/GrandBasharMileTeg that, after all of this investigation, I still think is the most reasonable guess at what happened: