Opposing Overhead Pylons

cork | environment | press release Sunday July 09, 2006 21:24 by Quentin Gargan & Clare Watson - Bantry Concerned Action Group

IMMINENT ARRESTS AND PRIVATE INJUNCTIONS

IMMINENT ARRESTS AND PRIVATE INJUNCTIONS
Dispute escalates and West Cork Farmers maintain resolve to keep overhead pylons out

ESB TO SEEK FURTHER HIGH COURT INJUNCTIONS MONDAY

How would you like one of these?

We wish to inform you of the following events;

1) PRESS CONFERENCE

Where: At the farm of Joe Burke, Chairman of BCAG. Droumaduneen, Bantry, where arrests are
believed to be imminent. Depending on what action the ESB / Gardai take, the gathering may then move to other protesting farms.

When: Monday morning 10th July at 10.00am

In attendance will be a number of the 26 farmers, their families & supporters and Kathy Sinnott MEP

2) HIGH COURT PROCEEDINGS

The ESB has issued proceedings against Tadhgh Coughlan and Susan Kingston. The case is to be heard in the High Court, Dublin on Monday 10th at 11.00am.

Background Information:
Bob Murnane and Denis O’Shea, Bantry’s most successful business duo, and joint shareholders of Ballybane Wind Farms, obtained permission for a wind farm near Colomane outside Bantry. Only then was it made clear to local farmers that the ESB had been contracted to run high voltage power lines and pylons for 14km across their lands rather than to a nearby existing line. For the past two years, 26 farmers have been insisting that the ESB should run these lines underground as is common practice in other EU countries.

These farmers aren’t against Murnane and O’Shea’s windfarm itself, However, they believe that the lines pose a risk to health and are a blight on the scenic beauty of the area. In some cases the lines are to pass within 25 metres of houses. Recent studies show that childhood leukaemia is twice as prevalent in families living near overhead power lines.

Farmers have been peacefully guarding their gates for the past ten days to prevent ESB staff from putting the poles and pylons up. Six farmers have already been injuncted by the ESB and two more injunction cases are to be heard in the High Court on Monday. Further to this, Murnane and O’Shea have themselves sought injunctions and financial damages (estimated by them to be at least €800,000) from 23 individual farmers. The ESB has also put a number of farmers on notice that they intend to seek damages arising from their costs.

But, as one farmer has said, “It has gone well beyond money”

More Information:
Joe Burke (Chairperson of group, injuncted farmer) 086 2705589 / 027 51585
Quentin Gargan / Clare Watson 027 52773 / 086 869 3140

FURTHER INFORMATION

Cost of putting lines underground
The Commission for Energy Regulation (CER) has set a price for electricity from windfarms at 5.75 cents per unit. This is lower than the price paid for electricity from gas and many other sources, and keeps the margins for windfarm operators too tight.

CER should establish a higher price for electricity to fund placing lines underground. Already there are higher prices for electricity from offshore wind farms because of the high transmission costs.

In relation to the Bantry project, the additional cost to put cables underground may be around €2M. The group estimates that a further ¼ to ½ cent per unit would cover this cost. There are long-terms savings as the maintenance cost of buried powerlines is estimated to be 10% of the cost of maintaining overhead lines.

Further wind farm developments
There are literally hundreds of wind farms in the pipeline in Cork and Kerry alone. The Department of the Environment believes that these would have a neutral or even beneficial effect on tourism. However, unless a policy is adopted that puts powerlines underground, the result would be quite the opposite. Windfarms would also attract vigorous oppostion from local groups if the policy of overhead power lines persists.

Overhead lines the norm in Europe
Only a tiny percentage of Irish 38KV powerlines go underground. In Holland all such lines are buried, in Belgium the figure is 85%, in Britain, 80%.

Health Risks
A report published in the British Medical Journal by Gerald Draper, Tim Vincent, Mary E Kroll & John Swanson studied 29,000 children with cancer, 9,700 of them with Leukaemia. They assessed the distance these children lived from power lines. They found that even at distances up to 200m from pylons, the incidence of leukaemia in children was 64% higher than in those living over 600m from a pylon. (British Medical Journal, June 4th 2005).

Other smaller studies have suggested that children living within 25M of a power line were at twice the risk.

Possible Causal Link
Separate research into particle ionisation is quite compelling. Denis Henshaw of the University of Bristol has shown that the electrostatic fields generated by cables polarise droplets of water, which are then attracted to the cables. Pollutants such as sulphur dioxide also become ionised. According to Henshaw, that's the hissing you hear near power lines, and the ions then dissolve in the water droplets.

Henshaw speculates that these ions might also cause disease by being inhaled and retained in the lungs. He has no direct proof that there is a health problem, but quotes a study by Beverly Cohen of the New York University Medical Center. In 1998, Cohen found that electrically charged aerosols are six times as likely to adhere to the lining of the lung than neutral particles. (New Scientist, 11th Dec. 1999)