March 28, 2012
Chile

High court suspends Ecopower wind farm on Chiloe Island

Patagon Unbound, www.patagonjournal.com 27 March 2012

Chile’s Supreme Court suspended on Friday the environmental approval of a controversial wind farm planned for Chiloe Island in southern Chile. Many scientists and environmental groups had expressed concern that the Chilean-Swedish owned Ecopower’s plan to construct 56 wind turbines on Mar Brava beach at Chiloe could threaten one of the most important habitats in the Southern Hemisphere for the endangered great blue whale due to increased boat traffic and possible acoustic contamination from the construction and operation of the wind farm.

Though much pressure was put upon Chile to require an environmental impact study for the project over the fate of the blue whales, including a December letter to Chile’s president signed by more than 40 scientists worldwide, in a suprising move for Chile’s high court, which rarely takes meausres to halt investment projects on environmental grounds, they halted the project due to the possible impacts it could have on an ancient, indigenous archaeological site.

Under Chile’s environmental laws, an environmental impact study must also be done if a project is sited in an area with archeological value. The high court said that an anthropological study in the addendum filed by Ecopower demonstrated the cultural and symbolic significance of the numerous small, dune-like mounds of white shells from 5,000-year-old remains of early indigenous inhabitants found on Mar Brava beach yet the affected indigenous community had been given “no real possibilities to influence the implementation, location and development of the project.”

Hence, the high court said the approval of the Ecopower project last year by the environmental commission in Chile’s Lakes region was “illegal and arbitrary” because it failed to provide a proper consultation to a nearby indigenous community as required under the International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 169 on indigenous peoples rights, which Chile ratified in 2008.

A formal consultation was not carried out because the government determined that the shorter-form environmental “declaration” filed by the company was sufficient, arguing that the project was not likely to have the “significant” environmental effects that would warrant a full environmental impact study.

Barbara Galletti, president of the Centro de Conservacion Cetacea, a marine mammal protection group in Santiago, called the Supreme Court decision a “historic victory” that affirms the obligation of energy companies to carry out environmental impact studies “when either our cultural heritage or endangered species are threatened.”

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/03/28/high-court-suspends-ecopower-wind-farm-on-chiloe-island/