MORE THAN 3,000 objections have been lodged to Donegal County Council over its policies on wind farms.
With another massive wind farm planned for the beautiful Barnesmore area – and an election in two weeks – campaigners say people need to fight the plans now.
The public were asked for their views on two motions promoted by the Glenties Wind Farm Information Group to place turbines ten times their tip height away from residential homes and centres of public gathering and, also, to remove the six river catchment areas in the county with the fresh water pearl mussel from their current zoning as being preferred for wind energy.
GWiG had shepherded these motions through Council for over six months last year with all of the elected councillors unanimously approving the said motions be sent out to public consultation at their January meeting.
The Council had then appended a third part to the motion whereby Council sought to “refine” the Zone of Visual Influence of Glenveagh National Park.
Members of GWiG marked the end of the public consultation process on Friday by delivering to the Council in excess of 2,600 individual submissions from all over the County voicing overwhelming public support for the twin proposals initiated by the Group, and equal rejection of Council’s proposal to “refine” the Zone of Visual Influence of Glenveagh National Park.
This number, 2,600, will be further augmented by the Group’s on line submission facility, the Group members’ personal submissions, and by further postal and email submissions from other members of the public. It is estimated that an overall number in excess of 3,000 will be the final figure for submissions.
Mr Ernan O’Donnell Chairman said that he and the group were amazed by the scale of the support in the County for this initiative and throughout their publicity campaign they had received emails and phone calls from all over the country and abroad from people who had visited Donegal and were concerned for the safeguarding of its environment.
“Initially we directed people to send their submissions directly to the Council,” he said.
“But it soon became apparent through contact with other concerned community groups, that the most efficient means of ensuring that people got their submissions to the Council was for us to organise collection and delivery, which we are doing here today”.
Mr. O’Donnell went on to say that he was grateful for the support of the three councillors, Councillor John Campbell, Councillor Marie Therese Gallagher and Councillor Séamus O’Domhnaill , all of whom had been unflinching in their support for the group’s efforts on this important amendment from the beginning, and had helped greatly in steering these proposals through the arduous Council process. He added that the Group wished to take this opportunity to also thank those candidates in the forthcoming local election who have given written pledges of support.
“The number of submissions from all over the County in support of our motions demonstrates the depth of feeling around this issue in County Donegal and I am calling on all candidates in the upcoming local elections to come out now and state their position on this. It is the least they owe to the electorate whom they are asking to appoint them as their representatives for the next five years. We also expect the County’s Executive in the Council to take heed of what has been said in these submissions and to help ensure that these amendments are passed in July next when they are to be voted on by the newly elected Council”.
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