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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