Information needed on wind turbines
Offaly Express | 30/07/2013 | www.offalyexpress.ie
I see that the wind farm companies are engaged in an information exercise in the local papers in order to create an impression that the proposed midlands wind farm projects are a good thing and that the people really should embrace them.
The Midlands wind farms projects make up the most important regional issue ever faced by any and all persons alive today in the Midlands and much further afield. It is vital that everyone gets the full facts.
What is the issue? Well, our Government has decided that the way to future happiness for all of us is to saturate our countryside with enormous industrial wind turbines. In an atmosphere eerily reminiscent of the Celtic Tiger property boom (and bust) our Government has decided that now is the time for another mad boom. This time it’s to be wind turbines.
The wind farm companies are obviously 100 per cent primed and informed on all aspects of the project by our Government. And even more obvious is the sure prospect of huge profits for these companies down the line; to judge by the scale and speed at which they are proceeding.
It has fallen to the local wind farm groups in towns and villages to piece together all the scraps of information and present a realistic picture of the finality of the projects. And this picture is truly appalling.
In one stroke, and in the space of a few short years, the visual environment that has existed for centuries, and is the natural right of all citizens, will be destroyed. Forests of gigantic machines will tower over and dominate the landscape instead. These machines will far exceed in height and size any wind turbines that people have seen so far.
As I see it, these projects represent the most destructive assault on our environment and way of life that I have experienced in my life. Judged on all the fundamentals, i.e. public health, no proper legislative controls, environmental destruction, economic viability, engineering performance, citizen ownership and control, national benefit versus loss of environment, property values, landowner contracts and compensation, large scale destruction of farms and farmland, employment potential, Government one-sided approach and failure to brief the citizens, they fail utterly on each and every count. They must be stopped. Don’t just take my word for it. Check the facts with any local committee.
So where do the citizens of Westmeath, Offaly, Laois, Meath, Kildare and further afield stand in all this? It is up to every responsible person to get the full facts and to do this on the basis of extreme urgency. It is not for fun that very many people are working tirelessly and have almost put their lives on hold in order to form and run committees to oppose these projects. As the full, horrifying, impact of the wind farm proposals become clear in each community, defence committees are being formed, spontaneously, right throughout the region.
So if anyone needs information, go to your local committee, or the one nearest to you; they will keep you up to date as far as possible. If your immediate area is not threatened just now it will be in the future, so you still need to be informed.
Since the Government has already taken a “Decision” we have a battle on our hands.
Look at it this way. You may have children in primary school now, or have close family ties to such children. Ten or twelve years from now these children could well pose you the following question: “How could you possibly have allowed this to happen?
Already in this century our Government and administration have bankrupted the nation. Now we have a Government carelessly bent on destroying the Midlands environment.
Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice, shame on us.
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M. Muldoon
Rhode
Co Offaly
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2013/07/30/information-needed-on-wind-turbines/