Cobh people oppose ESB's 150-foot pylons and power lines

The whole island of Cobh is in a storm of protest against the ESB, which intends to run a power line across the north side of the island. Every one of the farmers who farm the land and who are expected to accommodate the ESB in their designs to put 84 150-foot-high pylons to carry a 220 KV power line from Aghada to Raheen, have declared that there is no way they will allow the ESB onto their land to build these pylons.

Already the farmers, backed by strong campaign groups, have chased ESB officials off the land. ``There is just no way that the ESB is going to get this line,'' says Ed Mansworth, PRO of the Cobh campaign group. ``We are adamant. I'll go to jail if need be, and so would many others.'' You know he means it.

Bernadette Kett lives in a lovely bungalow looking out over a beautiful garden, already full of flowers and shrubs surrounding a gardener's delight of a well kept lawn. Four years ago, the ESB visited her to check out the location for their pylon. They informed her that she had laid her tarmacadam driveway through the garden and up to the house in the wrong place: it conflicted with where they wanted to put their pylon - directly in front of her house.

Ten yards behind the house, in a fenced-off field, there is already a high-voltage pylon carrying ESB power lines. Her three children can't go near there to play there because the ground underneath the line is sterilised ground, that is, it is too close to the strong magnetic field which surrounds the high voltage cable lines. ``We've campaigned for over four years, and I would say everyone on the island is behind us. Every day last week, we had a picket from 8am to 7pm on the only bridge to the island. We all played our part. The day of the meeting, it was babies out of the prams and onto the buses to County Hall. We just aren't going to let the ESB do this.''

As it is, there is a veritable spider's web of power lines crisscrossing the land. The people refuse to accommodate more overhead lines and have said repeatedly that the power lines should be laid underground, under the sea - a much more direct route from Aghada Power station to Raheen.

``It is not just damage to a beautiful landscape; it is the danger to health which explains the increasing militancy of the people who live on Cobh in their opposition to the ESB pylons. It is the new evidence which has emerged from several studies of the causal relationship between power lines and leukemia, and other cancers,'' says Anna McCarthy, who lives up the road, beside Ballymore.

There has been considerable body of work which gives evidence of a high statistical correlation between electromagnetic fields, such as those around power lines, and childhood leukemia. But recently a team based at Bristol University, England, under Professor Denis Henshaw, has given a causal explanation of this relationship.

Their research shows how tiny airborne particles, aerosols, which can carry carcinogens as well as viruses and bacteria, become yet more dangerous in the presence of the charged particles, so-called corona ions, which exist in huge numbers around power lines and can be measured up to 5 km from the power line. Professor Henshaw's research explains how in the presence of these ions, the dangers and accumulation of pollutant aerosols which people and animals inhale increase.

It is on the basis of this research that the Anti Pylon coalition, supported by the Cork Environmental Alliance, have demanded that the ESB look again at their plans to lay power lines above ground rather than below it.

The ESB argues that it is far cheaper to lay the power lines above the ground. They have given comparative figures of £9 million for overhead cables as opposed to their estimate of £30 million for undersea powerlines.

The campaign questions these estimates. As Ed Mansworth, of the Cobh and Lower Harbour Anti Pylon Group points out, the ESB has taken no account whatever of the loss of agricultural land or the devaluation of peoples' properties and houses. The Cobh campaign group financed an alternative costing of laying the cable undersea, which said costs would be nearer to £16 million.

The ESB claims that without the new power line there could be a shortage of electric power to the whole region, and the IDA has happily supported these claims with talk of the hope of attracting more chemical industry to the area, including the 1,000-acre industrial site at Ringaskiddy, which has cost them over £100 million to develop. The ESB claims it can get the cable,overhead, up in 18 months, whereas the undersea cable would take up to 5 years.

People in the campaign are wondering whether the ESB is so anxious to erect this cable in order to secure its largest customer in the whole state, Irish Steel, or ISPAT as it is now, in advance of deregulation next February. Irish Steel, which was bought for £1 five years ago by ISPAT, consumes as much power as 25,000 households put together. ISPAT is talking of investing in a Heat and Power Plant unit, producing its own power and maybe selling it into the deregulated market next year.

Local campaigners point out, however, that ISPAT has a reputation, researched and recorded by Greenpeace, for buying up small steel works, especially in Eastern Europe, asset stripping them, and closing them down. The steel market is notorious for overcapacity and cut-throat competition in the EU. The future of a relatively small steel producer, where, according to personnel manager John Hewitt, 85% of sales are to export markets, cannot by any reckoning be considered secure.

The IDA warns of disaster to the Cork Harbour area if power supply is not increased. People are asking whether the IDA plans more `dirty' chemical industry, which nobody here wants? People just don't know, but they have reason to be suspicious.

Residents of Cork Harbour have had 30 years of battle against the IDA and multinationals, like Raybestos, Pfizer, Merrel Dow, Sandoz and the Hickson Pharmachem plant, (now Warner and Lambert), to name just a few of the companies that have considered situating their dirty industry in this region.

Cobh people are no strangers to such campaigns, many of which the people have won. What is new here is that it is a semi-state company, the ESB, which is the intending polluter, over the heads of the people, and significantly, a majority of the councillors have chosen to support a very determined and widely-based campaign, which will not give up in a hurry.

The challenge to the ESB in Cork Harbour has become a challenge to the local authority and its planning process. It is a challenge by people looking for democracy and participation in their own government. Will the present government or local authorities heed it?

`Towering victory' for democracy and people's power

Cork County Council follows Leitrim lead - rescinds planning permission to ESB

    
  It is because of a lack of democracy and accountability in local government, in the lack of consultation with people themselves who are affected by planning decisions of the council, that we have ended in a situation where the County Council gave permission for the ESB pylons in the first instance. 
- Kieran McCarthy, Cobh Sinn Féin UDC Councillor

The most recent meeting of Cork County Council was historic. Councillors rejected the County Manager's advice and rescinded planning permission for the ESB to construct an overhead high-voltage line around the harbour and straight across the island of Cobh.

Local government is now in turmoil. This is the second time in a matter of weeks that a local authority has used Section 30 of the 1993 Local Government Act as amended to overturn planning permission. The first was in Leitrim, where the council voted unanimously for a motion put by Sinn.Féin's Liam McGirl to stop the erection of a mobile-phone mast in Ballinamore.

In fact, it was after reading an account in the Irish Times of Leitrim's challenge to their County Manager that Cobh people, who are in uproar over the ESB's plan for Cork harbour and Cobh Island, decided to encourage their county councillors to do the same, according to local activist Ed Mansworth.

Ed returned from England some years ago to live a quiet rural life on Cobh and found himself confronted by the ESB and their proposed power line. He became one of the staunchest campaigners of the Cobh and Lower Harbour Anti-Pylon Group, which has campaigned relentlessly over the past four years to stop the pylons and which organised the meeting of over 1,000 people who stood outside the County Hall while the debate took place.

For once, the councillors did as the people asked. They voted 31 in favour to 4 (all Fianna Fáil) against, approving Councillor John Mulvihill's resolution on the Section 30 motion. Thirteen councillors missed the debate altogether, (nine of whom were Fianna Fáil). When the vote passed, there was a rapturous cheer from the public gallery, where over 100 people had come to hear a fairly heated debate. It was acclaimed by CARA, the Cork Anti-Pylon Representative Association, as a towering victory for democracy and peoples' power, and by the hundreds of people who waited outside County Hall for the result.

    
  We have had enough of government by decree of companies or semi-state bodies, like the ESB, acting in cosy partnerships with county officials, then councillors from majority parties rubber stamping this procedure without people being informed, still less consulted.
As Section 30 of the 1963 act means that where there are new facts to emerge and where work has not already begun, councillors have the power to rescind planning permission on a development. As one councillor, independent Paddy Hegarty, said in the debate: ``If we do not pass this resolution today, we will have failed the people who elected us. I think then it would be time to scrap local elections and appoint a commissar instead.''

And of course this has happened before. Councils have been closed down in the past, particularly over the service charges issue, and a commissioner, as it is known in Ireland, appointed by the Department of Environment and Local Government, in place of elected representatives.

``It could happen again'' says Kieran McCarthy, a Sinn Féin. councillor on Cobh UDC, ``if democracy really takes hold.'' Kieran has fought tirelessly urging Cobh UDC to democratise its local government. It has taken four years, since his original resolution to hold council meetings in public, for the other councillors to agree. ``So much for accountability and transparency.'' Now this resolution is being held up by the County Council, which need months to consider the question and claims there are faults with the heating in the buildings where the open meetings would have to be held.

The very same week as the county council vote to rescind the ESB's planning permission, there was a public meeting in Cobh where the UDC was lambasted by Cobh people who wanted to know why the Development plan for the area had not been publicised by the UDC, why local people had not been informed of proposed developments, and why there had been no time for local people to make submissions.

``The people went to the very heart of the matter,'' says Kieran McCarthy. ``It is because of this lack of democracy and accountability in local government, in the lack of consultation with people themselves who are affected by planning decisions of the council, that we have ended in a situation where the County Council gave permission for the ESB pylons in the first instance. It is a bit late in the day for County Councillors, now facing elections in June, to be making themselves out to be heroes in the cause of democracy.''

Heroes or not, councillors withstood considerable pressure to vote against the resolution to rescind ESB planning permission. County Manager Maurice Moloney said that he had no role in the issue before the council but that he had the job to give ``dispassionate advice.'' He went on, supported by the county solicitor and senior planner, to threaten that it was likely that the council and the councillors themselves could become liable for compensation to the ESB.

Nor was the ESB itself behind the door with advice to councillors. Company secretary Larry Donald told all councilors: ``The elected members of Cork County Council, purporting to act as the planning authority, cannot lawfully exercise the power conferred by Section 30 of the 1993 Planning Act by voting for the motion... They are required to exercise a degree of judgement... and if they vote for the motion and fail to deal with the matter in a judicial manner, they will expose the council and themselves to serious legal consequences.''

The historic votes in Cork and Leitrim pose some vital questions. Are things changing in local authority planning? Is it aberrant behavior in the run-up to elections that has broken the cosy relationship between the pack of large party local representatives and the council officials, or is it the exposure of George Redmond's antics and the fear and suspicion by county councillors that their council officials could, with so much power, be up to the same games and brown envelopes?

Some people believe it is a real change in the attitude of people, who now, in these times when there are more jobs, more education, and perhaps easier lives for some, are not prepared to be shoved outside of the decision process or have their views ignored.

``Who knows,'' says Kieran McCarthy. ``Only time and elections will tell whether people are ready to vote for representatives who have a regard for and interest in their constituents' views, or whether they continue to vote for the pack.''

But whatever about radical changes in what people look for in their representatives, the ESB will have to go back to the courts and most likely Bord Pleanála as well, to challenge the council's decision.

Kieran adds: ``What should have happened and should always happen in such serious planning decisions, which affect so many people, is that there should be a properly constituted public inquiry, and people affected should be informed, encouraged and helped to take part. We have had enough of government by decree of companies or semi-state bodies, like the ESB, acting in cosy partnerships with county officials, then councillors from majority parties rubber stamping this procedure without people being informed, still less consulted.''