“Genuine shock, horror and amazement at what is being proposed and still no proper meaningful meeting with community.”
That was the reaction from local residents following last Friday’s meeting in Drumshallon Forge at which international power company EDF set out to placate fears held by locals about the company’s plans to erect a wind farm in the Kellystown/Monasterboice area comprising of up to eight wind turbines, each of them 180 metres tall.
One local said: “I wouldn’t mind if they were small but these things are enormous – they look like aliens from another planet!”
“Who in their right mind thinks it’s acceptable to put a wind farm in the middle of nearly 400 houses?” asked another.
“This can’t be right, when you see the ads for the wind farms on the TV there are never any houses in sight, I thought wind farms had to be in isolated places well away from homes.”
The five white 180 metre high turbines dominated the skyline in almost every one of the photos that formed part of the company’s exhibition.
A man living on the Barn Road in Dunleer and had watched the online version of the exhibition, phoned friends in Drumshallon to check the montages as they could not believe how huge the turbines would look from the village.
“The beautiful scenic view from the Harestown road is going to be ruined” he said. “Imagine this… The Mary McAleese Bridge is 95m high. The spire in Dublin is 120meters high. These turbines are 180meters high!
“With their associated visual Impact, noise, shadow flicker and aircraft warning lights, lighting the night sky. It is just too damn difficult to see how structures this tall can be sited in a residential area which has well over 1,200 men women and children living within 2k of this industrial wind farm.
Prior to the information meeting EDF had announced that once the wind farm was up and running, they would establish a community fund similar to the one run by the Indaver waste-to-energy facility near Platin.
Locals were not impressed however with many claiming it was “just a bribe”. Regarding the “near neighbour fund”, some asked: “If wind warms pose no harm or threat to our health and wellbeing, why do EDF want to compensate those of us living within one kilometre of the wind farm with 1,000 euro per year”?
Local resident Mary Marry said she was dismayed to see that the main access route to the Kellystown wind farm was to be via the Gaulstown road just west of the Kilsaran Concrete quarry.
“Isn’t it bad enough that we have had a quarry on our doorstep for the past 30 years?” she asked, “Now we are to have a wind farm thrust upon us. ‘
“The Gaulstown road is busy enough with huge lorries and trucks … We already have rock blasting which shakes our homes, noise, and dust pollution from the quarry now we are to have whooshing and flickering from massive turbines plus all the extra disturbance of the construction of this wind farm” It’s just not acceptable she said.
“We are now living in an industrial area. Peaceful country life is becoming a thing of the past.”
