Consultants are soon to be appointed in the six-year-old row between the ESB and residents over the proposal to ring Cork harbour with electricity pylons. At issue is the ESB's urgent need to upgrade power supply to industrial and commercial users in the harbour area. It proposes to do so by stringing cables between more than 80 overland pylons.
Residents' groups claim the cables should be laid under the seabed across the harbour. The Irish Times has learned that a review of the proposal, which was agreed last year by the Cork Anti-Pylon Representative Association (CARA) and the ESB, under the chairmanship of Mr Phil Flynn, has made slow progress.
The members of the review body were appointed last May, and since then the key area of disagreement between the two sides has been choosing which consultants to bring in to examine the controversial proposal. The consultants are now about to be appointed.
The talks between ESB and CARA got off to a slow start last September. "We weren't even going down the same road until February and it was May before the review group proper had its first meeting with two ESB and two CARA members," according to sources.
"The stumbling block has been the appointment of the independent consultants. The ESB had very definite views on who should be appointed but obviously, so did we. "After almost seven years of battling against this proposal you could say there was more than a little mistrust on either side. We have now reached the point where there is agreement that the consultants must be absolutely independent, but with a proven track record of examining proposals similar to what the ESB wants for Cork Harbour. "Hopefully, the consultants will have been identified and appointed within a few weeks," the sources added.
Both sides have agreed not to make public statements, but the ESB's position document, issued prior to the establishment of the review, still stands.
In it, the company argues that unless the power supply to the greater Cork area is reinforced with a 220kV cable, the existing system will be unable to meet the growing demand on the Cork power grid which in recent years has surged to 47 per cent above the national requirement.
The danger, says the ESB, is that without additional supply, vital maintenance cannot be carried out on the transmission system now in operation, and this could lead to interruptions both to commercial and domestic supplies. Without a guaranteed supply, industrial investment in the region could be affected, the board adds.
The document also says that an exhaustive analysis of the underwater option has been carried out. It would be "reckless" to supply a major city like Cork via a cable running under a narrow and busy shipping lane, the ESB says.
CARA says the cost of such a cable at 1997 prices, would be £18 million, but the ESB says £37 million would be a more realistic figure. The board also discounts CARA's fears that public health would be endangered by the overhead pylons. It cites research in the UK by Richard Doll, who has found no evidence of increased risks for "childhood leukaemia, cancers of the central nervous system or any other childhood cancer" because of exposure to magnetic fields.
Although the issue is far from being resolved, CARA considers its success in delaying the project thus far as something of a victory, despite the fact that a planning appeal and a High Court action found in favour of the ESB.
The Government is banking on Mr Flynn's proven track record as a facilitator to defuse the situation. For its part, CARA has threatened to run anti-pylon candidates at the next general election in several constituencies if the review fails.
In tandem with the work of the agreed consultants, CARA also plans to engage its own consultants to examine the impact on the environment, health, agriculture, tourism, as well as land and property values.
The proposal to run a necklace of pylons in an arc from Aghada on one side of the harbour to Raffeen on the other, would, at the very least, be unsightly in one of Cork's great beauty spots. CARA insists it has no disagreement with the ESB's fundamental point that power transmission in the greater Cork area must be improved.
The ESB contends underwater cables would cross a major anchorage and a narrow shipping lane with thousands of shipping movements each year and approximately 20 Force Eight storms annually.
Meanwhile, eco-warriors have turned their attention to the pylon dispute as their next major environmental issue after the Glen of the Downs controversy in Co Wicklow. Prior to the review being announced, several protesters had already begun to dig in on the Raffeen side of the harbour.
Whatever happens, the pylon project as proposed will not go ahead quietly.