EC sues Ireland for ignoring public after wind farm landslide

Brussels (Platts)--11Apr2005

The European Commission is taking the Irish Republic authorities to the
European Court of Justice for failing to carry out a second environmental
impact assessment of a planned wind farm, it said Monday. Work on Ireland's
largest wind farm project, the 60MW Derrybrien in County Galway, stopped in
October 2003 after a landslide which the EC described as 'an environmental
disaster.' 

The European Union's environmental impact assessment law requires EU members
to assess the effect of certain projects and to consult the public about them
before they are started 'to avoid or minimize environmental harm and
nuisances.' But the EC said that the original EIA for Derrybrien failed to
assess properly the risks arising from the soil's instability. It believes
that the Irish authorities broke the EIA law by not carrying out a fresh EIA,
including a public consultation, before work resumed in November 2004.
Ireland's environment minister, Dick Roche, said that his department had been
discussing the issue with the EC but had not yet seen its latest decision.

Roche said: "I consider it unacceptable that the first that my department
hears of this correspondence is through the media. This does not strike me as
a professional way of conducting business." This was a recurring issue for all
member states, he said. "It should also be noted that many of the alleged
failures relate to technical or administrative breaches of directives rather
than actual failures of substance," he added. 

Derrybrien is owned by Hibernian Wind Power, a 100% subsidiary of state-owned
Irish power incumbent Electricity Supply Board. HWP's managing director, Brian
Ryan, said that the company was fully complying with Irish law and with the
recommendations of various independent technical reports conducted after the
landslide. He expects Derrybrien, which is to have 71 wind turbines, to be
completed by end-2005/early 2006.

This story was originally published in Platts European Power Alert
http://www.europeanpoweralert.platts.com

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