GWO visits Forcarei to provide support to 7 mountain communities

• by OEGA
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Continuing with its main function of advising wind landowners to make the process of implementing wind farms more transparent and seeking to strengthen the negotiating position of these owners, The Galician Wind Observatory visited Forcarei in the Region of Tabeirós -Terra de Montes in the province of Pontevedra.
Wind farms have been present in this City Council for nearly 25 years. The process for the start-up of the Paraño Oeste wind farm, shared with the Beariz (Ourense) city council, has been open since 2015. For its part, the As Penizas wind farm process began a few months ago. The meeting with community landowners affected by these two wind farms was held in the house of the town of Sixto. Due to the pandemic, three communities connected via the internet while the other 4 were actually present at the meeting.

As usual in this type of meeting, the GWO detected an absence of information in the hands of rural communities to face decision-making processes. The communities indicated that neither the city council nor the regional administration had offered them collaboration to fully understand the dimension and scope of ongoing projects. In the specific case of the Paraño Oeste project, the promoter company changed the number of wind turbines, each of their unit powers and, possibly, the territorial condition of the wind farm as of the very moment this project was authorized in 2015. However, the residents have no official documentary evidence of these changes. Only the intermediaries of the allegedly new promoter, arriving with partial information, seem to know everything given that they are in possession of new information unknown to the communities.
The GWO will collaborate with these communities to duly obtain more information in time concerning the status of this wind farm. The Communities expressed their helplessness and frustration concerning their lack of knowledge on how to best defend the rights of all owners.
The As Penizas wind farm was on public display some weeks ago. In a few weeks we will activate a collaboration protocol with the affected communities.