The Republic's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has said it is considering legal action against those responsible for a landslide at the construction site of a new wind farm that damaged a river in Northern Ireland.

Erosion Legal Ireland UK

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has said it is considering legal action against those responsible for a landslide at the construction site of a new wind farm. Last November’s slide at Meenbog in Co Donegal brought thousands of tonnes of peat and trees down the hillside and into the River Finn. ...Invis Energy, owners of the turbines which are being built to supply energy to Amazon data centres, declined to comment. 

Erosion Legal Ireland UK

Internet giant Amazon is staying tight lipped after construction was suspended at a windfarm it is invested in, following a landslide. A peat slippage at Meenbog on the Donegal-Tyrone border has polluted rivers in both NI and the Republic leaving angling groups and fishermen seriously concerned about a mass fishkill.

Impact on Landscape Erosion UK

The collapse happened at the site of a wind farm under construction at Meenbog, near Ballybofey, County Donegal, last Thursday. A large quantity of peat slid down the hillside and ended up in the Mourne Beg River near Castlederg. ...The Ulster Angling Federation (UAF) has warned the river may struggle to recover fully from the landslide, which a spokesman labelled one of the largest pollution events in the history of Northern Ireland and Ireland.

Erosion Pollution Ireland

A County Tyrone river turned black by pollution from a peat bog landslide may struggle to recover fully, an angling group has warned. It happened at Meenbog Wind Farm, near Ballybofey, County Donegal, in the Republic of Ireland on Friday. The quantity of peat that entered the waterway that runs into the Derg river is not yet known.

Erosion Pollution Ireland

While there were no reports of injury or concerns that the local water supply could be affected, one councillor said 'there are serious questions about how this happened.' Councillor Gary Doherty of Donegal County Council said: 'I've this morning requested an immediate stop on all works at the site until a full investigation is carried out and the full extent of the damage caused is known.' 

Impact on Landscape Erosion Ireland

The 70-turbine wind farm, owned by Gort Windfarms, a company owned by ESB, was built in the Slieve Aughty Mountains between Gort and Loughrea, Co Galway in 2003 without proper environmental impact assessment. A landslide occurred during construction which caused major damage and is thought to have contributed to severe flooding the following year.

Impact on Landscape Erosion Ireland

The wind farm was regarded as one of the largest in the EU when a landslide occurred during its construction in October 2003 by an ESB subsidiary, Hibernian Wind Power. At the time, large areas of forest and peat up to a depth of 5.5 metres on the top of the Cashlaundrumlahan mountain had been removed, causing the 2km-long “environmentally devastating” slide. Fish were killed and waterways polluted when half a million tonnes of peat and debris was displaced.

Erosion Pollution Legal Ireland

A legal opinion issued by the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) has proposed that the State should be handed a daily fine of €1,000 for every day since its earlier ruling on July 3, 2008, until it achieves compliance with EU environmental legislation on assessing the impact of the development of a wind farm at Derrybrien in south Galway. Such a fine, if confirmed by the full ruling of the CJEU later this year, would result in a figure of €3,998,000 to date.

Erosion Pollution Legal Ireland

Never for a minute did he believe anyone, or any company would be allowed to build in such a way that an untold number of tons of muddy sediment would blast through the ditches, the sleepy creek and into the Rappahannock River, all part of the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

Erosion Pollution Virginia

Its [Derrybrien wind farm in Galway] construction required the removal of large areas of forest and the extraction of peat up to 5.5 metres deep from the top of Cashlaundrumlahan Mountain, causing a devastating landslide in October 2003. The landslide destroyed the ecology of a 20km section of a nearby river system, killing around 50,000 fish.

Erosion Pollution Ireland

Less than two days after pile driving began to construct industrial turbines near Jessica and Paul Brooks' home in Chatham Township, their once crystal-clear water well has become clogged with sediments.

Erosion Pollution Ontario

In order to build the project, mountainous terrain must be blasted and graded to develop the roads to provide access of trucks and cranes to these high elevations.   The natural hydrology is interrupted and redirected, with tens of acres of imperious cover created.  To compensate for this change in the natural runoff patterns the Stiles Brook project would contain upwards of 50 plus structural storm water management facilities that would require maintenance in perpetuity. If these systems fail due to insufficient design or construction, lack of maintenance or poor siting, storm water runoff from the site will increase significantly.

Impact on Landscape Erosion Vermont

Smith said the runoff trouble was predicted by a team of 10 concerned Vermonters, including water quality experts and lawyers ...“At the end of each meeting, the people we met with told us there was massive political pressure (to approve the Lowell project),” she said. “During the meeting they told us we were raising good issues, and that they would look carefully at them and get back to us. Well they never got back to us and then the permits went out.”

Impact on Landscape Erosion Vermont

A Roscommon TD has called on Coillte to suspend construction of a wind turbine farm in the county until an investigation is carried out into widespread flooding at homes and farms in the area.

Erosion Impact on People Ireland

It seems the world is not running out of oil after all. President Obama’s hope of presiding over the beginning of the end of the era of fossil fuels will be dashed.

Erosion

A deal has at last been reached between Moyne Shire and AGL Australia over roads damaged from construction of the Macarthur wind farm. AGL has confirmed this week it has come to “a verbal agreement” on a settlement for roads torn up in the making of the $1 billion development.

Impact on Landscape Erosion Australia

Geoff Goll, the principal engineer of Princeton Hydro, Exton, Pa., said that it is very difficult to control stormwater runoff from steep terrain, and he said that the measures currently being employed often don’t work. He said roads and trails would need to be built to the turbine sites themselves, creating impervious surfaces, which increases runoff and pollution. The Lowell Mountain wind project created 27 acres of impervious land, and total disturbance of the mountain totalled 135 acres.

Impact on Landscape Erosion Vermont

The Rivers Agency says it will inspect a potential watercourse obstruction after the bog broke apart near the Glenconway windfarm east of Claudy. Jason Cooke of SSE, which owns the farm, said “unprecedented rainfall levels” at the site caused the collapse.

Erosion Ireland

...plowing into untouched grassland releases carbon dioxide that has been naturally locked in the soil. It also increases erosion and requires farmers to use fertilizers and other industrial chemicals. In turn, that destroys native plants and wipes out wildlife habitats. It appeared so damaging that scientists warned that America's corn-for-ethanol policy would fail as an anti-global warming strategy ...The Obama administration argued that would not happen. It did.

Impact on Landscape Erosion Pollution USA South Dakota