Plans for Donegal wind farm that received dozens of objections to be submitted again

Plans to build a wind farm near Glenties that received dozens of local objections are to be re-submitted.
The application for the Graffy wind farm was withdrawn last month following a High Court judgement involving a wind farm in Longford.
Harley Planning Consultants say the plans were withdrawn due to the decision in the case involving environmentalist Peter Sweetman and An Bord Pleanála. The High Court found that the proposed turbine’s heights and blade lengths were expressed as a maximum, not the actual proposed dimensions. As a result, the planning application did not contain the level of detail required to allow a grant of permission
In a statement on the wind farm’s website, the planning consultants said that following the decision “it was considered prudent to withdraw the application and re-submit with specific turbine dimensions”.
The turbine locations and all the other elements of plans will remain the same in the new application.
“Specifying the exact turbine dimensions in the new planning application is the only change from the withdrawn planning application,” the planning consultants said.
Cuilfeach Teoranta applied to Donegal County Council in June to build eight turbines with a maximum blade tip height of 150m in the townlands of Graffy, Meenamanragh and Dalraghan More near Glenties.
The Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media raised concerns about the potential impact of the wind farm on bird populations as well as the freshwater pearl mussel and salmon.
The Lough Agency also raised concerns about the potential impact wind farm developments can have, including “the risk of large scale peat movements which can ecologically damage whole rivers and catchments”.
More than 30 submissions were made from locals, all voicing opposition to the development.
The Graffy Environmental Group, a group of local people opposed to the wind farm, said it was disappointed that a new application is to be submitted.
Chair of the group Anthony Scott said the group regarded the withdrawal and resubmission of the application as “a rather cynical move” as the developer had been granted an extension of a month by the council to submit further documentation.
“Rather than use this time to submit the small changes outlined, they decided to withdraw the application and propose to submit it again with the changes added in,” he said.
“This will no doubt mean that the residents and constituents that spent time and money on making submissions to the council will now have to go through the whole process again.
“One must wonder if this is a new means of grinding down inconvenient objections to their application. If they withdraw again will the planning office allow them to resubmit other applications ad infinitum?”