News in Charente, daily news in Charente with Charente Libre

Dutch woman campaigns against wind power

#151 From 2008-08-01 to 2008-08-08

Helped by her husband Barend Ten Wolde, Dutch resident Mareille Schwartz is angry at what she considers to be a lack of communication about plans for wind farms. ‘It’s quite incredible that this kind of project that affects the public is not discussed with all the local inhabitants.’
Reproduction interdite.

Her home country may be famed for its windmills but that hasn’t stopped Dutch woman Mareille Schwartz from campaigning against plans to build a wind farm near her home in France where she now lives. She has attacked what she calls the ‘wind turbine mafia’ and says that the public are not being properly involved in decisions to erect wind farms in their area. Mareille Schwartz, who left Holland four years ago to move to a new home at Genouillé in the Vienne, just across the border from the Charente, and who is president of the local pressure group Vent funeste, says people need to be more fully informed about the impact of energy farms, and she is campaigning to protect the natural beauty of the countryside. ‘When I hear mayors say “there’s nothing here” that annoys me,’ says Mareille Schwartz, whose husband Barend Ten Wolde is also involved in the campaign. ‘No – this is a wonderful region which we have to protect from these awful machines.’ She attacks the wind farms not just on aesthetic grounds – though she thinks they are ‘absolutely horrible’ – but for environmental, economic and even health reasons too. They only work when the wind blows, and in Germany they have had to build fresh power stations to back up wind farms, she says. They also make a noise, which is not just a nuisance – but may also cause hearing-related health problems. The former teacher only found about the plan to build a wind farm in her area when by chance she read an article in the village bulletin at Bouchage just over the border in the Charente. This revealed plans for a wind farm linking six communes, three in the Charente – Bouchage, Taizé-Aizie and Nanteuil-en-Vallée – and three in the Vienne. The developer involved, Élise Kebaili, says the plan to erect 16 turbines is still at the study stage and no demand for planning permission has yet been made. ‘There are plans for a public meeting in September,’ she says. The mayors of the communes involved are broadly behind the plans, largely for financial reasons. Moïse Haumont, mayor of Nanteuil, says: ‘Our village will have four to six turbines, and we’d earn ten to twelve thousand euros a year for each one – it’s quite a tidy sum.’ What really annoys Mareille Schwartz and the other members of the association is that the ideas are being backed without residents having a say. ‘It’s quite incredible that this kind of project that affects the public is not discussed with all the local inhabitants,’ she says. The association has lodged formal protests against attempts to seek planning permission in the Vienne, and claims to have discovered some breaches of the planning process.