It is considered one of the most majestic waterfalls in north Wales, a mist-shrouded torrent that has inspired storytellers and artists for centuries.

But a fierce row has broken out over a scheme to harness the force of Rhaeadr y Cwm to generate electricity, with one of Wales’s foremost naturalists, Iolo Williams, the latest to step into a growing row over the project.

Williams, also a popular broadcaster, has added his voice to 1,000 protesters who have expressed fears that if the scheme goes ahead it will damage one of the most wonderful sights in Eryri (Snowdonia) and harm an important habitat for precious ferns and mosses.

Credit: Arc Photography

The rugged landscape around Rhaeadr y Cwm, near the village of Llan Ffestiniog, is associated with the Mabinogi, a medieval masterpiece and one of Britain’s earliest examples of prose, and was painted by David Cox, one of England’s greatest landscape painters of the 19th century.

Three brothers behind the project, who farm the land, say the Cwm Cynfal project will provide power for 700 households and will not harm the landscape but “dissolve into” it.

Their idea is to abstract water at the top of the gorge above the falls, which is more than 100 metres tall, and carry it in a buried pipe to a turbine at the bottom, where the water would be returned to the river. A cable would carry the electricity up the side of the valley to join the National Grid.

The brothers say abstraction would happen only when there was enough water in the river to maintain an “adequate flow” and no more than 70% of the extra flow would be taken.

Read the whole story in The Guardian