Community feels under siege from giant wind farm

(A slighly edited version was published in the Sunday World on April 3rd 2016(

Residents in the small mountain community of Broughderg in Co Tyrone feel they are under siege from a planning application to build Northern Ireland’s largest wind farm beside them. The Doraville Wind Farm will cover five townlands, of over 15 square miles, with 36 turbines. Eleven turbines will be 415 feet high, and 25 will be 460 feet. One 460 foot turbine will be on a spot over 1,400 feet high.

The site is in the Sperrins’ Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

The wind farm will, according to the planning application, also include transformers, switchgear and hardstanding at each turbine; internal access tracks and site access; an operations building and wind farm substation compound and building; a parking area; two temporary construction compounds; five permanent meteorological masts; borrow pits; peat storage; spoil deposition; forestry removal and works on the road to Magherafelt.

Mary McKenna from Broughderg Community Association said the community feels under siege. “These turbines will overshadow us,” she said. “I feel it’s a threat to the long-term survival of the community. This is bringing in a large-scale industry. It’s going to be noisy.

“We’ll get no peace on the road when the building work is going on. The company has said that there will be 2,476 lorries coming and going in one month. The roads round here aren’t made for that kind of traffic.”

McKenna feels her community is being taken for granted because it is small and in a remote area. “We have a good community here, and we stand by one another,” she said. “I have never done anything except what the community wants me to do.”

She said that, for the past 20 years, the community association has been working to develop tourism in the area. “That will have long-term jobs for our young people,” she said.

Local resident and councillor Sean Clarke said he knows a young married couple in the area who were refused planning permission to build a house because of the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

He is concerned that Tyrone has too many wind farms. “They are really in your face, everywhere,” he said. “From Broughderg, I can see half a dozen wind farms. There are about half a dozen others in the pipeline, that I’ll be fit to see as well.”

As well as being a councillor and farmer, he is a tour guide who believes the area has a lot to offer. “It’s an untouched landscape,” he said. “It’s natural and it’s different. You have glaciated valleys, eskers. You have human activity – people have been in the area for over 7,000 years. There are monuments round here, like the Beaghmore Stone Circles.

“There is heritage and culture. This is Munterloney, it was the heart of the Tyrone Gaeltacht. This place is unique – it’s what makes people want to see it.”

Clarke is also concerned that parts of the wind farm site are blanket bog. “The Sperrins are noted for summer storms, with thunder and cloud-bursts,” he said. “Landslides are common enough – on ground that’s not touched.

SSE Renewables are seeking to build the wind farm. According to documents they have filed with planners, the wind farm will be decommissioned after 25 years.

The documentation makes clear it will provide few jobs. “Wind turbines and wind farms are designed to operate largely unattended,” the application says. “An operator will be employed to monitor the turbines, largely through remote routine interrogation of the SCADA system.” This operator need not be based on the site.”

Locals are not the only objectors. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSBP) has expressed concerns about turbine blades killing birds, and destruction of bird habitat. “We have concerns that the level of bird survey carried out for this application is misrepresented within the Environmental Statement (ES),” the RSBP wrote. It has further concerns about SSE’s application. “ The presentation of the data for the collision risk analysis is poor. ... The number of turbines used in the analysis is 26 rather than 36 which would likely underestimate the impact.”

A spokesperson for SSE said that, because of public consultation “we took steps to revise the turbine layout to reduce the visual impact accordingly.” This included reducing turbine numbers from 43 to 36. The company carried out extensive environmental studies. “They identified that the implementation of appropriate mitigation measures would ensure that the project would not adversely affect the ecological integrity of the site,” the spokesperson said. 

A detailed peat stability risk assessment was undertaken “to identify potential effects and the appropriate mitigation measures for maintaining stability of the peat... All project site infrastructure is located in low risk areas.”

The spokesperson claimed that Doraville Wind Farm will inject £50million into the local economy, through jobs and purchases of supplies, pay £28million in rates, and give £16million to community projects.