April 25, 2004
Environmentally friendly?
If you step outside of the Radisson hotel in Galway city and look east, you can see nine small white crosses dominating a distant mountain ridge. They are the first nine wind turbines at Derrybrien, and work is about to resume to erect the remaining sixty or so.
The construction company have promised to follow all the measures outlined in the Galway county council report issued after the landslide. They are also planning to fell over 600 trees so that the turbines will be more exposed to the wind. The locals aren't too happy with this plan. The trees are plantation pine trees, so they were due to be cut down at some stage anyway. However, there is a danger that cutting so many at once might affect drainage and water run-off in the area. It seems ironic that a supposedly environmentally friendly project has already caused a huge landslide and now will remove a forest.
What I cannot understand is how much improvement will be caused by the tree felling. The turbines that are standing already are erected in a forested area, but they are so tall that the blades are tens of metres above the tree line. Plus, they are on top of a mountain and facing the full might of the onshore wind from the Atlantic. It's hard to see how the trees would make much difference.
Meanwhile, the people of Pollathomish, Co. Mayo are threatening to object to the revised plan for the onshore oil terminal nearby if the county council don't erect landslide barriers for houses that were in the catchment area of the landslide last year. There are plenty of people living at the foot of the hill that gave way last year, and they want the council to erect barriers that work in a similar manner to avalanche barriers in the Alps.
Posted by Monasette at April 25, 2004 08:36 PM