Call to end work on 60m wind farm after landslide

THE south Galway community of Derrybrien has renewed its call for a complete halt of the construction of a 60 million wind farm in the Slieve Aughty mountains following yesterday’s landslide, the second this month.

Local community members watched in astonishment yesterday morning as fully mature trees flowed off the hillside in a river of thick mud.

One local farmer said the rivers and streams were turning black with the pollution, and fears were expressed for domestic water supplies.

Local residents’ association spokesman Martin Collins said he wanted to see the abandonment of the construction project on the 71-turbine farm.

The developers of the project are an ESB subsidiary, Hibernian Wind Energy.

Mr Collins of the Derrybrien Concerned Residents’ Association said locals in the village, some three kilometres south of the site, are united in their opposition to the project, and want to see work stopped.

After the first landslide earlier this month, Galway County Council tried to stabilise the area by building dams to hold back the peat, much of which rolled into a gorge which is part of the Lough Cutra system. Yesterday, the river of peat found another route. The Shannon Regional Fisheries Board is monitoring the situation. No one was injured when a kilometre of mountainside, 100 metres wide, rolled through Coillte property on October 16.