Environmental tests ‘a must’, say residents

A village in East Cork is calling for rigorous noise and environmental studies to be carried out if the ESB is to extend its local substation — a project reportedly vital to the modernisation of the electricity grid.

Knockraha Community Association is arguing that an environmental impact statement (EIS) must be carried out, as such assessments were not completed when the substation was first built and the planned extension will increase the site area by 50%.

Knockraha, housing the biggest ESB substation in the South, is also the starting point of the controversial Gridlink pylon project which is seeking to build a corridor of 400kV pylons from Cork to Wexford and on to Kildare.

Eirgrid says it wants to “reconfigure and extend” the existing substation at Knockraha about 13km from Glanmire to improve the reliability and flexibility of the station.

But Knockraha Community Association’s latest objection to the project says: “There are local concerns about the current and potential impact of the extended substation, fears around ground water damage, creosote contamination, habitats impact, the site being the source of a stream, littering, noise sources, visual landscape degradation, surface water run-off, industrial materials usage and storage, sewage disposal, traffic impact and health impacts. An EIS/EIA may go some way towards addressing local concerns”.

Rejecting the further information sent by Eirgrid to Cork County Council in recent weeks, the residents’ group also expressed concerns that Eirgrid’s biospheric report, which accompanied the original application, notes that “while noise levels are below 40dBA...the substation noise will be clearly audible in the area”. The community association wants a more comprehensive noise assessment to be carried out.

The substation site is about 21.1 acres in area and the extension will increase that by 2.8 acres. New towers, powerlines and landscaping will add another seven acres. Eirgrid has described the substation as a ‘bottleneck’ due to the number of electricity sources feeding in and out of it. Its engineers want to rearrange the existing circuits and install additional circuit breakers to help overcome the logjam.

Substations are used to manage the electricity flow, to manage faults to avoid blackouts and totransform electricity voltage as required. The work will take three to five years to complete.

The community association is calling for clarity from Eirgrid around how many new towers it wants at the expanded substation. According to the original planning application last year, it wants to remove three existing pylons at the site and replace them with five new pylons of up to 46m tall. Six 24-metre high lightning masts are also to be built on the site.

However when Cork County Council requested further information from the ESB, the cover letter stated the “re-alignment of the existing overhead circuits requires the construction of two new pylons”.

The community association’s spokeswoman Noelle Murphy said: “At one point in the original application, reference is also made to the removal of two existing towers and the construction of four but then the removal of three towers and construction of five. This is complicated further by the descriptions in the visual impact assessment document where it speaks of the removal of three and construction of three. Which is the correct description of the works?”