$580M undersea cable rerouted to avoid the grave of Dobby the House Elf | Hacker News Reader

$580M undersea cable rerouted to avoid the grave of Dobby the House Elf

tomshardware.com

105 pointsrbanffy103 comments

> The National Trust, which owns the land, has previously warned pilgrims not to do so, as the area is ecologically sensitive, but it seems that people still do so.

Ah okay, laying a few stones is ecologically sensitive, but if a billion dollar company wants to dig up the entire beach for a cable, that's not a problem.

I have literally never heard anyone associated with the environmental movement say:

"This area is ecologically insensitive. I'm not too worried what you do here."

Until they define some map or scale of what "ecologically sensitive" means, I put zero weight on that statement. It's meaningless. They say it about everything because it is their job to do so.

I'm guessing you also haven't asked. All places are very much not the same degrees of sensitive and important.

A common trick in mining is to send surveyors to an area they don’t want so the various interests just so happen to decide that the area being surveyed is the one with historical / ecological significance. After that has been established they send surveyors for the area they do want.

Why wouldn't those various interests just complain about the next area being surveyed? Why would they stop after the first?

The ecological studies also cover the surrounding areas. They can’t say that absolutely everything is significant so to make the stronger case they pile the significance into the area they think is the likely site to be developed. Then the miners are ‘responding’ to the feedback by relocating to a less significant location that already has been ecologically studied and deemed insignificant.

That's not how environmental surveys work, or the process for challenging them. They absolutely must include detailed information about the actual site and the activity proposed to occur at that site.

Subsequent developments can take advantage of the initial survey but must still provide an environmental study about how their own activity will impact their specific site.

The #1 reason for environmental surveys being deemed invalid in court is the course of action you discussed: developers trying to avoid scrutiny by not being sufficiently specific about what they are actually planning to do or where.

The miners were doing mining surveys for internal use only, the environmentalist were submitting the cultural / environmental surveys as complaints which they’re allowed to do as part of the law the local government made for itself since it was government land that was being leased. It was more of a public consultation process, if no one complained then that’s fine too. The miners already have strict environmental regulations they have to follow regardless of where they build. Having seen these submissions it’s often stuff like, there is a river and since rivers are where people tend to congregate if we were to look we might find some ancient stone age human artifact despite no such thing ever being found within 100s of kms. Also rivers move, especially small ones.

If you say no 100% of the time, your work product won't be worth much.

It costs political capital to do so.

OK. What are some ecologically unimportant places in England? Somewhere I could throw up a nuclear power plant without anyone raising a fuss.

Birmingham?

Can you be more precise? Like an actual area on the map. Because when I look at England's map of greenbelt areas [1] literally everything around Birmingham is protected.

[1] https://www.cpre.org.uk/interactive-map-of-englands-green-be...

I think they were joking. In a literal sense, cities require green spaces for water management. Otherwise you end up like Chicago where they paved everything and flood constantly.

I mean, not really, right? Permeability would help, but the first and second principal components of our flooding situation are the fact that we're built on a flat swamp, so water has no natural place to go, and we're built around an undersized combined sewer system that would be dazzlingly expensive to replace.

Green belt areas mostly are not markers of ecologically important areas. They're a planning tool that largely exists to prevent urban sprawl. A lot of the green belt area is unremarkable commercial agricultural land.

Once you crush the red and blue pills and snort them you can't unsee the environmental damage of agriculture.

Slough

Swindon? They do have the magic roundabout.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Swindon)

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!

It isn't fit for humans now

I think here it's worth distinguishing between actually ecologically important, and the ability of campaigners to raise environmental arguments to try to prevent development when their underlying reason is something else (i.e. not wanting a nuclear plant in their back yard). There are definitely ecologically unimportant places in England, but it's almost certain that if you try to put a power station there somebody will raise an environmental concern anyway. This will probably eventually be dismissed, but you can gum up the works procedurally for a pretty long time.

I mean that's my point, if the campaigners are not willing to be honest about ranking the places they actually care about beforehand (and occasionally letting a project happen), I'm not going to listen to anything they do say.

You started here with "associated with the environmental movement". That's not the same as everyone campaigning on a local issue who puts "environmental issues" into their big list of why some local development shouldn't happen: most of those people aren't associated with the environmental movement at all.

I guess my point is that I think the problem is nimbies, not environmentalists, and since I think we need a faster and cheaper planning system in the UK I think it's important to identify the actual problem. Getting the Campaign to Protect Rural England or whoever to produce a ranking of places by importance does nothing if we still have a system where local residents can raise objections about building on locations at the bottom of the ranking and it takes forever to push something through.

Sure, the environmentalism movement has sufficient independent organizations such that each of them can protest some site as environmentally sensitive while the others stay quiet. I'm sure some would conclude that this position of universally banning any human development everywhere is a pure accident and that distributed agreement to do so has no evidence of systematic coordination.

I can believe there is no systematic coordination across these organizations, but if I had to meet someone in San Francisco and I knew nothing about where and there was no way to coordinate, I think we'd both end up in front of the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero.

I think the point here is that there are two categories of "environmentalists", one of actual environmentalists who go out on the weekend and plant shrubs and monitor the Lesser Black-Tailed Whatever, and the other of people who don't want you to build something for other reasons but are willing to claim to be environmentalists to stop you. There's overlap between the groups of individuals, but their organisations are different.

The first group are generally willing to say "hey, here's a map of critical Ramsar-protected coastal wetlands and surroundings, we don't want you to put a pipe anywhere BUT if you really have to then this section is regrowth and was drained in the 60s".

The second group are just obstructing you by any means they can and want to push you to a neighbouring town, who will also obstruct you. They'll switch to heritage listing, archaeology, noise complaints, smell, neighbourhood character, the moral character of your workers, or literally anything they can use to shut you down. They're not going to accommodate you by shifting the pipe slightly left because they're generally motivated by not having a pipe near them at all.

Sure, the John Does who make up Climate Action Now CIO say yes through that instrument and will go over the next Tuesday to No Building Ever CIC to say no through that instrument. There is neither any distinction of any significance to the legal structures they use to block things nor is there any value in saying "I'm not going to block this through Company A; I'm going to use Company B". Whether one uses Blue Eyes White Dragon or Exodia The Forbidden One, one is doing the same thing.

Those people certainly exist, but so do actual environmentalists.

As a matter of politics, prevalence matters more than existence. And since the actual environmentalists nonetheless act as rearguard for the others, the distinction is faint.

What do you mean "the distinction is faint"? The distinction is clear and obvious: does this thing have actual ecological value, and does this group suggest viable alternatives?

I mean "since the actual environmentalists nonetheless act as rearguard for the others, the distinction is faint". i.e. it's not interesting to me that person A wears mask M1 and suggests viable alternatives and then puts on mask M2 and opposes them. If they extend this to a system where A wears M1 to suggest alternatives S1 and oppose S2 and B wears M2 to oppose S1 and suggest S2 that doesn't change my evaluation of them.

The fact that A is part of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Environmentalists and B is part of the Environmentalist Church of Latter Day Fundamentalists and that these are entirely different organizations with entirely different objectives does not change the fact that they arrive at the same Schelling point consistently as a co-ordinated multi-prong action.

There is no distinction to me between such players and a single person playing both roles. It's a pretty standard organizational Sybil attack constrained by the number of times they have to visit Companies House. Though I suppose if you are eager to distinguish between them, then that's the point where we must drop the discussion.

If I'm reading you right, you're suggesting that if person A and person B have different proposals that inconvenience you in vaguely similar ways, you believe they are functionally identical people, even if they're fighting each other too.

This seems nuts to me! It's a very conspiratorial way of seeing the world. It seems like it would take a huge amount of coordination for persons A and B to fake their own conflicts.

City of London? Does it have much ecology left? Then again I suppose too many people would raise a fuss...

Anywhere in London would be good. There's nothing else worthwhile there.

Salford

Maybe the company has at least made committments to restore it to the way it was after?

Beaches are extremely dynamic environments and can heal in ways that other areas can't.

Still, people laying stones seems way less invasive, then digging it all up. So yes, people will continue to be there and the digging is once, but the impact seems literally deeper.

My yard got dug up to run a sewer line. They filled it in after and planted seed. I couldn't possibly tell you where it happened now.

If they'd left a big pile of rocks in the spot, I'd bet I could find that.

When we're talking damage to a sensitive environment an ecologist would have the opposite answer to yours. If you dig up a natural environment you can't "plant seed" to reclaim it.

An ecologist would readily note that we do restoration work on damaged environments on a regular basis, so it is clearly possible to undo some level of damage. They'd also likely note that consulting an ecologist as part of the process might limit the damage in a way that a bunch of Harry Potter fans making a pile would not know.

Not doing anything might indeed be better for the environment alone in isolation, but has to be balanced with other considerations, like the benefits of a power cable carrying clean power from wind farms to replace coal.

It is also entirely possible to plant native, locally appropriate seeds in a reasonably natural fashion. I am obviously not proposing a layer of lawn sod.

Where is the big damage in putting stones on a spot? So sure, that spot and the area around will be in use, so sensitive life won't prosper there, but apart from that?

> Where is the big damage in putting stones on a spot?

I think that's a question for the ecologists.

My guess, though, would be that part of the concern is people visiting the site on an ongoing basis as a tourist location, which won't happen with a buried power line.

> Ah okay, laying a few stones is ecologically sensitive, but if a billion dollar company wants to dig up the entire beach for a cable, that's not a problem.

The billion dollar company is monitored by ecologists and other professionals to make sure they build things according to environmental impact laws and follow their permits (e.g., after digging, restoring the top soil, etc).

Randos moving and stacking stones, especially in large numbers, may alter habits for (small) animals and cause erosion:

* https://www.ausableriver.org/blog/leaving-no-trace-rock-stac...

* https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/conservation...

* https://www.nps.gov/articles/rockcairns.htm

You would think so but not the case for the construction of the controvsersial A69 highway in France. Infractions are fixed through authorization change ...

https://france3-regions.franceinfo.fr/occitanie/tarn/albi/au...

Almost as if ecoologist are not listened to. What a surprise ...

> Around the beginning of the construction work, between 2022 and 2023, criticism of the project was given national media coverage, with several associations highlighting its negative environmental impact, as well as its high price for users and the fact that the current free expressways bypassing the towns of Puylaurens and Soual would be incorporated into the motorway and made toll-paying.[1][2] The project received unfavourable opinions from the National Council for the Protection of Nature [fr][3] and the Environmental Authority [fr].[4] Throughout 2023 and early 2024, demonstrations were organised, bringing together up to several thousand environmental activists. On 27 February 2025, the administrative court of Toulouse annulled the environmental permits, leading to the suspension of the construction work.[5] On 28 May, the administrative court of appeal of Toulouse, allowed the work to resume awaiting the final judgement planned for the 11 December 2025.[6]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A69_highway_(France)

Seems to illustrate my point: large projects are high profile and may be scrutinized. People making changes to the local environment in ones and twos will hardly be noticed individually, but if enough ones and twos are added up over time, in aggregate they can cause problems.

* https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2025/09/visitors-remin...

* https://friendsofthesmokies.org/blog/dont-move-rocks/

* https://www.hrwc.org/stop-stacking-rocks-in-the-river/

Certainly not as serious as oil spills or climate change, but it is also simpler for you to deal with than you trying to solve those two big issues: all you have to do is not touch/move the stones/rocks.

Yeah, isn't it crazy how that works?

There's some open space near my house with a fenced off area saying to stay on trail to protect the ecosystem, but of course oil and gas companies can drive their trucks through to setup fracking rigs.

Humanity collectively benefits by having electrical infrastructure so there can be more of us who can accomplish more things. I'm so sick of these effectively Original Sin arguments dressed up as pretending to care more about some fish or shore birds than about your fellow humans. I'm not sorry for existing, and I want lots of cheap power :)

Especially in the case of the UK which famously permits seabed trawling in the Marine "Protected" Areas.

https://oceandesk.org/destructive-bottom-trawling-occurs-in-...

We need heroes like this: https://planetwild.com/missions/21-underwater-sculptures-ita...

There is some skepticism about the veracity of this. Of course, be skeptical of the skepticism.

https://bsky.app/profile/dsquareddigest.bsky.social/post/3ms...

The whole story is absolute nonsense.

If you think this particular story about the dedication of some people to a fictional character from a book is nonsense, I've got bad news

No, I mean none of this ever happened. There's no record of it pre this silly season story.

What we can say for certain is that the sole source of this claim is the project director for Greenlink, Simon Ludlam, and he made the claim as an anecdote on a podcast this week. The project's public consultations were in 2019.

The anecdote starts at 16m55s: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/can-we-connect-the-wor...

Non-British people might also like to know that the UK news media is in what's called the silly season, where they run any old nonsense as news because Parliament is in recess, the MPs are on their holidays, and there's a dearth of serious announcements to cover: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silly_season

It would not surprise me if it came up at some point in the long and tedious process of public consultations and planning permissions that such projects need to go through (basically anyone can write in to comment/object on such things for any reason), and it stuck in his mind enough to mention it, even if it didn't actually weigh into the decision about where the cable went.

If anyone wants to read dozens of PDFs, here are some of of Greenlink's planning applications for where the cable comes onshore at Freshwater West, including responses made to the planning committee:

https://planning.agileapplications.co.uk/pcnpa/application-d...

The latter application includes a Archaeological Written Scheme of Investigation (WSI) which explains what needs to be done to avoid disturbing things of archeological importance. No mention of fictional elves in there, but I wasn't expecting any.

This is specifically with Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority, who are responsible for the beach. Pembrokeshire County Council have their own planning authority, e.g.:

https://planning.agileapplications.co.uk/pembrokeshire/appli...

> The fans’ resistance to having Dobby’s “grave” desecrated seemingly prevented the undersea cable from going through the area. It was instead rerouted in an area that was close to some Bronze Age remains and urns, which, ironically, are associated with human burial.

> instead rerouted in an area that was close to some Bronze Age remains and urns

To be fair, in the UK (and much of Europe) bronze age remains are everywhere. But there’s only 1 fictional Dobby grave.

Like farmers will regularly dig up a bronze age thingamabob while plowing a field. For example [1], [2]. There’s a story like this every couple of years.

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12/23/farmer-bronze-ag...

[2] https://allthatsinteresting.com/rhubodach-scotland-bronze-ag...

while I do agree with this point, I want to point out that this isn't quite a fair comparison.

every single entity has (normally) a single (real) burial site. Us grouping many unknowns in one group, and comparing to a single specific one is not quite fair...

there is only one burial site of many other fictional characters including some other well known and beloved ones.

There’s another!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd1l6vm84d0o

Since it’s a fictional grave, you can build it anywhere you want, as many times as you want.

But this is the one and only burial place pictured in the movie that people watched. You can't change that now.

If they can use their imaginations to pretend it’s a real grave, they can use their imagination to pretend a different pretend grave in a different location is the real one.

TBF, human burial sites are a dime a dozen. There's relatively few locations associated with house elf remains.

None, to be precise.

They didn't say the location contained them, just that it was associated with them, which obviously it is for at least some fraction of the population.

While we're pedanting, I believe the location is where his death scene was filmed; he was buried somewhere else.

Because beaches are terrible places for graves, one good storm, the beach shifts and you've got to bury them all over again.

maybe go back and watch the movie; it shows Harry digging his grave slightly above the high tide line, same location.

If anyone doubts that popular media has at least somewhat taken the place of religion, here you go

And made the cable reroute through a Bronze Age burial site too...

it's a nice change that a big company suffers the result of an "organic hallucination" brought on by people associating the location with a fictional event; how do we make this happen to AI companies?

Religion is, in fact, glorified fiction - so glorified that it's been declared a funda-mental right. Hilarious, I know!

Reminds me of this classic article from Michael Lewis:

> Alcoa, the biggest aluminum company in the country, encountered two problems peculiar to Iceland when, in 2004, it set about erecting its giant smelting plant. The first was the so-called "hidden people"-or, to put it more plainly, elves-in whom some large number of Icelanders, steeped long and thoroughly in their rich folkloric culture, sincerely believe. Before Alcoa could build its smelter it had to defer to a government expert to scour the enclosed plant site and certify that no elves were on or under it. It was a delicate corporate situation, an Alcoa spokesman told me, because they had to pay hard cash to declare the site elf-free but, as he put it, "we couldn’t as a company be in a position of acknowledging the existence of hidden people."

https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2009/4/wall-street-on...

If it's a legal requirement to have the government check for hidden people before you do building, why do they need to hide the fact they did it? I'm not a Christian but I'm pretty sure I'd still need to deconsecrate a church before knocking it down

> I'm not a Christian but I'm pretty sure I'd still need to deconsecrate a church before knocking it down

What makes you think that? If you own it, it isn't a listed building, and zoning laws allow it, you can knock it down in most countries. I'm not sure that would be illegal anywhere.

Deconsecration is part of canon law for some religions. Whether you as an individual care about those or not is a personal matter. I doubt that there are many cases where the previous owner forgot to deconsecrate the church when they sold it off.

UK law can be quite intertwined with the church in a lot of cases, so I wouldn't want to confidently say this wouldn't turn up somehow. And churches are also pretty likely to be listed, anyhow. (It could also turn up as part of the planning permission which you do need for demolishing a large structure in the UK)

> I'm not a Christian but I'm pretty sure I'd still need to deconsecrate a church before knocking it down

I am a Christian and it would not occur to me that that was a thing. It's just a building.

Catholics have a ritual for it I think.

Ofcourse the really old churches are turned into monuments and they come with free dead people under the building. Can't do much with those.

I'm trying the imagine the scenario where the government official reports that elves have been found. On what evidence?

This is a rehash of the Guardian article (submitted here yesterday with no traction), which should the the link:

Harry Potter fans force relocation of £430m undersea cable to avoid Dobby’s ‘grave’

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/10/harry-po...

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Dobby's_grave

  Many fans have visited the beach to lay painted rocks, several crosses, and many socks in Dobby’s memorial. However, as the memorabilia has had a negative effect on the environment, the beach asks that visitors just interact with the site by taking photos.[4]

Note: there is currently no indication of this controversy in the article. Anyone who holds an account on Fandom could check through the history and diffs, for any revision since 2019 that would indicate someone tried to add information about the undersea cable or the alleged row.

Truth. There was never any attempt to route it over that grave.

https://backofmind.substack.com/p/chortle-on-a-chortle

Actual article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/10/harry-po...

Podcast where this is all from, "Can We Connect the World's Electricity Grids? with Simon Ludlam" (google it for apple/spotify/etc links)

Dobby dies?! Spoilers!

Spoiler alert geesh

The cost of planning the alternative route hasn't been published anywhere yet AFAIK, although it's non-trivial to estimate.

If you every get the chance, go visit Freshwater West… it's a beautiful part of the world

We are not serious people.

This is false.

The cable was already under ground where it gets to the grave.

Downvoted for speaking the truth, lovely.

I'll find the article and post it shortly.

Up yours.

It is predicted that Binface will win by a landfill.

its undersea right, why would it matter ????

seeing the picture online seems that the grave would not be touched

its undersea until it arrives to the land it connects to

I doubt there is global data center on that grave

HVDC cables aren't landed at datacentres.

(And even if it were a fibre connection, those usually have dedicated Cable Landing Stations which are mostly concerned with separating the power & data cables and dealing with the power & cooling. Datacentres tend to be further inland)

Here's how such cables get underground https://youtu.be/0HUFXuF8QDM?t=98

This is a nice thing.

I'm so tired of needing technical workarounds because of human stupidity. Exact same thing as the "age declaration" bullshit we see all over. Dig that trench, bury the cable, put the sand back, end of the story. Here in France we use public money to pay "experts" to ensure building wind turbines won't disturb the "natural energy highways" or some other bullshit before delivering the permit, they may even propose alternative locations for the turbine to disturb less the energies, bunch of lunatics.

What are you talking about ?

It's difficult to explain shortly and I think it's a very local problem to France, but basically: in some regions, local branches of gov mandates bullshit experts to make sure the new wind turbines won't disturb some imaginary natural energy network. They call it "geobiology".

If only those sorts of problems were local to France.

They can call it what they want, I call it "paying off an industry to support the government" because that's essentially what it is. It's a make work project for whoever benefits and that industry will thereafter go to bat for the BS because they don't want the gravy train to stop.

For the last point: https://www.franceinfo.fr/environnement/energie/energies-ren... (in French)

The associated pseudoscience has a wikipedia page too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geobiology_(pseudoscience)

Oh my, you're right ! That's awful.

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