Sir, - Michael Viney (Another Life, June 12th) mentioned proposals for windfarms on the west coast, in the context of the Heritage Council's forthcoming document on landscape policy. Unfortunately the question has become extremely urgent and cannot wait for long-term consideration.
I understand that the Co Galway planning office will be making a decision on July 6th on an application from Comharchumann Inis Meain for three windmills, in addition to the one for which planning permission was granted in 1997 but which has not yet been built. There is also an extant permission for a windmill in Inis Oirr. Another application for a similar development to be sited on the cliffs of Arainn (Inishmore) some way west of Dun Aonghasa has been turned down, but may well be renewed.
I am reluctant to involve myself in this matter, but, having mapped the Aran Islands in great detail and written so much about them, I feel a degree of personal responsibility for the preservation of their particular qualities. Also, I believe that they are a unique part of our cultural and natural heritage, and that developments detrimental to their beauty and singularity are not just of local but of national and international concern. So I am writing to the Comharchumainn of each of the three islands asking them not to go down this road of wind power, despite its superficially "green" credentials.
There are places in which windfarms could be sited without much visual pollution, but the Aran Islands are not among them. In particular the Atlantic coastline, from the lighthouse in Inis Oirr to the one on An tOilean Iarthach at the western end of the island chain, is by any standards quite exceptional, and is virtually uninterrupted and unspoiled. With its superb sequence of cliffed promontories, majestic rock terraces and impressive storm beaches of huge boulders, this is one of the world's most sublime landscapes.
But despite its grandeur, this is also a very vulnerable landscape. Its perspectives are long and wide open. Anything sticking up above the field walls is visible from far away. Nothing could be more destructive to it than the endless gesticulations of windmills. If such an interruption is sanctioned anywhere along the length of that coast, the continuity will be broken, and other threatened intrusions will be harder to resist. So it is extremely important that this current proposal in Inis Meain be turned down.
The argument against the proposal in terms of the tourist industry is so obvious it hardly needs mentioning. In Inis Meain the idea is to use electricity from this windfarm in a desalination plant. However I am sure that there are solutions to the water shortage problem less heavy-handed than siting the equivalent of an industrial development in the midst of famous and lovely scenery the visitors come to marvel at from all over the world.
In the "Companion" to my map of Aran I wrote: "There may be specific developments that in other places would be welcome and proper, and that Aran should forgo. To live on Aran is a rare and demanding privilege; it is to be the inheritor of something both awkward and valuable, like a Stradivarius, or intangible, like a talent that only rewards long commitment." I concluded by commending these precious islands to the good sense of the islanders, and I hope this will prevail in the present situation. But the county council planning department has immediate responsibility for the decision to be made very shortly and which will set an example for the future. I ask anyone who cares about the question to write to it, and to the island co-operatives, urging them not to permit this desecration of the Aran Islands. - Yours, etc., Tim Robinson,
Roundstone, Co Galway.