Pylons

Mountainsandh wrote: »

Urban dwellers are drumming on about rural people expecting to be subsidized, while I, a rural dweller, am also subsidizing your bus, luas, and train services for example, your street lighting, your bicycle lanes, your playgrounds and green parks. Because I pay taxes too, and do not benefit from any of that.

Urban areas subsidise rural ones.
And no one subsidises Dublin, it gives approximately €1 billion to the rest of the country every year in social transfers.

Everyone gets to benefit from wind farms, both urban and rural.
The problem with this country is the extent of one off housing.
Which means it's very hard to plan infrastructure that doesn't inconvenience rural communities.

If planning laws were stricter it would be easier to build essential infrastructure away from peoples home's.
But people don't want that, which leads to this situation.

jackofalltrades wrote: »

Urban areas subsidise rural ones.
And no one subsidises Dublin, it gives approximately €1 billion to the rest of the country every year in social transfers.

Everyone gets to benefit from wind farms, both urban and rural.
The problem with this country is the extent of one off housing.
Which means it's very hard to plan infrastructure that doesn't inconvenience rural communities.

If planning laws were stricter it would be easier to build essential infrastructure away from peoples home's.
But people don't want that, which leads to this situation.

Dublin is subsidizing its own to a large extent.

Tell me so, should rural areas be only filled with farmers (less of them, more efficient), and another few agricultural professionals ? Just that ?
And then they could be loaded up with turbines and infrastructure, and everyone but the farmers be in towns anyway so it would all be fine.

Wouldn't we get great "use" of all that space if there was no one living there.

Is that the solution ? Is that possible ? Is that what urban dwellers want ?
Bigger towns, all growth in towns, all countryside dedicated to servicing towns.

Is that the concept to follow, how humanity intends to evolve ?

Planning laws were supposed to regulate & balance all that before it even happened, and that failed.

And I agree with some of your points, but the situation as it stands is that there are a lot of one offs, and by the way, some have been there quite a while. For example I live in a land commission house.

The mistakes have been made, and what regulations there should have been to stimulate villages were not applied.

Ranting against people who currently live in one offs does not achieve anything.

The only way to reach a compromise now is to support and encourage rural communities, and offer clever and targeted compensation for accommodating infrastructure.

Not a big lump sum to a few, but balancing community incentives that will participate to the redevelopment of an area, rather than spoiling it further.

In some cases individual compensation will be inevitable, in a lot of other cases, there will be solutions found, and while the cost may remain the same or less, the entire local community will benefit from it.

People living in these houses near pylons' proposed routes are parents, grandparents, possibly some are older people without relatives living nearby. Some have a local business. Provided safe distances are respected, and the community they belong to is enhanced, not imposed on by the changes, a potentially great number would agree.

Let's put it this way : if I had to have a pylon 500 metres from my house, but I got a great broadband service (along with the rest of the community !) and the village was going to get a spanking new playground* from the inconvenience on myself and a number of other houses on the route, chances are I would welcome the change.

That's provided the area is not a particularly scenic one, and safety is given due consideration of course.

How much money has been lost with the delays and hassle so far ? How much more to come ?

What is the better option ? Persist with the current modus operandi, or embrace the community support approach ?


* or better road, or a new roof on the hall, or better insulation for my kid's school, or a starter opportunity for a village shop, or a heritage/tourism support premises, or renovations to a local tourist spot...

jackofalltrades wrote: »

I was talking from the point of view of both urban and rural areas benefit from wind turbines, as in both use electricity.

Dublin pays for itself and several other counties.
There's no "to a large extent" about it.

I'm not going to go wildly off topic and get into a whole rural/urban planning.
We have to many one off houses, we shouldn't encourage anymore.
And the ones that exist at the moment should have to pay their own way.
It failed because of political pressure from people who want to build one off houses.

So you want even more money? The huge social transfers just aren't enough.

It is not off topic to talk about rural planning strategy in relation to infrastructure needed for urban centres. In fact I would pretty much say it is essential.

"Pay their own way" ? The discussion is on how to find spots to accommodate pylons, in the countryside,for the benefit of urban hubs.

Poor little planners who were"pressurized" and had to accept brown envelopes... I'm not sure I (or justice) would look at it this way.

If you reread the last pages you may notice for example that I am living in a one off house that was built by government of the time, and am quite happy with my choice of poor roads, own water supply, own investment in an esb line to my house.
What social transfer ?

Yes money, not to individuals. (Except those whose house will be bulldozed obviously)
To communities.

I think your revenge rage against one off dwellers who "have to pay" is misplaced and very damaging to progress in fact.

Blaming planners and politicians for what people demanded is simply distorting reality.

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I can't believe that your argument rests on the fact that authorities were pressurized into bad planning. I am a professional who sometimes have to make decisions that affect people's lives. If I let myself be pressurized into making a bad decision I would be held accountable, simple as that.

You are making the apology of corruption. That is distorting reality.

And again, your animosity does not solve the situation.

micosoft wrote: »

You seem not to realise the way planning permission works. Professional Planners zone areas professionally. Local Councillors then rezone for one off's. Why? Because they get fired by the electorate at the election if they don't. That's not just pressure. That's guaranteeing the only politicians that got in were those that rezoned anything. Hence the massive amount of zoned land in this country. And any attempts to remove this power from local politicians have been challenged as "anti democratic".

I find it strange that people in Ireland find it so difficult to draw a line between their vote and the impact it has. The "corruption" as you put it is entirely with voters who exchange their votes for personal favors.

Any animosity is borne from your desire to speak for all rural inhabitants when you don't and using the rural/urban canard to distract from the utter irresponsibility of large segments of the rural electorate. I myself personally attended a town-hall meeting to challenge septic tank inspection charges on the basis that nobody had a right to p**s and s**t in my groundwater and the local clowns who were happy to do that who setup the meeting. We are our own worst enemies, and have destroyed our towns a villages with ribbon and once off developments. Blaming cities and planners and politicians avoids facing up the problem. And if we don't face up the problem we will never solve it.

Facing up to the issue would involve - in my view

1) planning the "proper" living solutions - what would a community of the future look like if you moved away from one off house - and planning for that.

2) we zone areas for wind development/infrastructure - but we also need to zone the areas where people would actually live in the future.

3) Do we need to write off communities - how many - how do we do it - and WHY. And how do we plan a positive outcome for those whose communities get written off

4) Designing and planning living AND energy to co exist happily together - there are 2 options that I can see - a) you change the living solution - ie LESS one off house - more build up village/town type living. So youd be talking of changing 200 one off homes in an area - and creating a settlement - either a new built up area - or (more likely) an extension to an existing build up area. or b) designing energy production/solutions to actually work okay in an area where people live - but we don't have the mindset of doing that at the moment

5) A planner/policymaker may actually detest the fact that people chose to live in one off homes. But sorry to say - you still need to plan where they are going to live in the future. Hindsight is a fantastic thing - if something is seen as wrong (one off house) then lets look to address that. Problem is - the old chesnut - money

micosoft wrote: »

I agree with pretty much all of that. We do have to have a serious conversation about sustainable communities in the countryside. This is a classic "tragedy of the commons" where individual preferences over the long term are worse for everybody. I don't think we are writing off communities, but re-configuring them - we are writing off one-off housing by simply not allowing them going forward and removing subsidies from them in the form of higher property tax charges. If you want to make a lifestyle choice which impacts on everyone's standard of living and costs the state a lot more resources to support you shouldn't be subsidized to do so.

There are no short term solutions. If we took the decision today it will take 50 years to unwind the poor planning of the past two decades but it will vastly improve everyone's lives to have sustainable towns and villages with a core and walking distance to amenities. Which is why a serious discussion has to start and people need to be challenged around their negative preferences...

To me it feels more like writing off - because communities (rightly or wrongly) tend to get overlooked in energy planning.

A wider focus is needed when planning projects so that they can fit into what we want a future to be. This future will be different to what we experience today - because we will be changing.

That's why I mention zoning for energy and LIVING - so that we know where we are going from BOTH energy and community perspective.

you might have a living zone around towns and villages - so that we are saying - this is where people will live - the allocated living space. Meanwhile we allocate our energy production space.

At the moment - for various reasons - both are in conflict - ie people are living in an area - but that area is then zoned for wind farm development.

The turbines are the major challenge here - and while the actual turbine itself doesn't take up a lot of space - the amount of land that needs to be available for use by/for wind farms - looks big because of the need to have a certain distance between turbines - and the requirement to have lots of them to deliver the power.

Biomass on the other hand (not advocating it at all) has its flaws - but you can have biomass growing in the field next door without issue. You could probably very easily have a village slap right bang in the middle of a forest.

In fact a resort park in the middle of a forest is proposed for Longford at the moment.

Having a village in the middle of a wind farm doesn't seem so possible - this is where zoning would be important - that you don't have a village right in the middle of a zoned for wind farm development area area - with a 500 metre setback right around the village.

That's where zoning for living comes in.

I accept btw - that for various reasons - not all rural communities will survive - my thinking is merely - that I want to maximise the amount of rural communities that continue as communities - and minimise those we lose.

Mountainsandh wrote: »

I think it's more a chicken and egg way to look at it.

I don't believe there is enough of an electorate and so powerful that it wiped out all honest, forward thinking politicians, but I believe there were enough politicians willing to be swayed by a powerful few.

Unfortunately at local government level you are talking low hundreds of people to get into the LA. Few people bother with LA elections so the ones that do vote tend to be the ones looking for something. They are the guys rezoning not TD's.

Mountainsandh wrote: »

Again your bitterness is blinding you to the fact that we are in agreement on what needs to be done.

I believe we are in agreement about the problem and what needs doing. The disagreement is around who is at fault. When you have a neighbor protesting against septic tank charges and you know their tank has not been properly looked after you do get angry. I think the Irish Electorate in general needs to be more accountable for their bad electoral choices. We are probably the most over represented society on earth. And therein lies part of the problem.

Mountainsandh wrote: »

I disagree however, on penalizing people who simply availed of/exercised their right to build a house in a particular spot at the time.
And by the way, if you are going to do so, you will also penalize people like myself and family, who chose to renovate an old house, planted there by government. And all others who chose to renovate existing one offs.

I don't believe a punishing policy is going to work, and yes I do believe a policy of incentives to settle in villages will work, given time.

I'm not talking about penalizing people. I am asking that they pay their way for their lifestyle choice and not asked to be subsidized by urban or villagers who are the ones being penalized.
I do agree that along with that stick we need to have incentives of properly resourced villages and towns. But it's got to be a combination of both. You can't create vibrant communities around cars.

Mountainsandh wrote: »

There's going to be more spending on rural areas involved, and the possibility it might be partly supported by energy/infrastructure hungry companies makes good sense imo.

I don't think taking more money off families already settled in one offs and forcibly planting pylons in their gardens is going to achieve the desired effect.

Absolutely. I think Cooperatives for sustainable energy for example (already done in Denmark) are the way forward to ensure communities buyin and get a return for their community. Pylons will continue to be part of life though, much like motorways, pig farms and all the other undesirable aspects of modern life/intensive agriculture etc.

Mountainsandh wrote: »

By your own reasoning, if indeed the electorate is so powerful as to obliterate any responsible, intelligent, forward planning and honest politician, then the threat of more taxes and pylons in one offs families' gardens is going to exacerbate and prolong the issues.

I have the unpopular view that we have too much democracy in this country and that the current bust is largely due to the way our political system is constructed. There has been too much focus on the Bertie Aherns or Sean Fitzpatrick's of Ireland and not enough discussion on the system that creates this type of character.

For example, I think property taxes* should be entirely managed by the local county council. That makes council elections meaningful and gives locals the option to vote for more services meaning a higher property charge or less services meaning a lower property charge. Fundamentally the electorate can see cause and effect. They don't at the moment so just vote for favours.

*As an aside I actually think Urban areas should subsidies rural areas to an extent. What that is should be a separate debate... but about the meaninful

Mountainsandh wrote: »

I am French, and was just reading that in France there is a tax on pylons (over 200kw)imposed by the government on energy companies, and that tax is intended to go to affected communities. The money is simply transferred to local authorities as due. It is obviously proportional to number of pylons installed and for what lines.

Link is in French, sorry.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imposition_forfaitaire_sur_les_pyl%C3%B4nes

Anything like that here I wonder ?

Not a direct tax. It's an odd way to do it given the grid is owned by the State in France as it is here.

In Ireland what tends to happen is that developers will agree to a social dividend as part of the planning permission application. This can take the form of building for example a community center and then providing a annual grant to it. Amusingly Eddie O'Connor who runs one of the bigger wind developers offered swimming pools to the locals.

Again - the problem here is almost the bribe element to it and where do you stop. Should anyone who lives near a unpopular structure get a bribe? Say a dump? What about a pig farm. I've even heard people complain about slurry. This money ultimately comes from electricity users.

I do think communities should be able to benefit from community wind schemes though or similar.

micosoft wrote: »

Not a direct tax. It's an odd way to do it given the grid is owned by the State in France as it is here.

In Ireland what tends to happen is that developers will agree to a social dividend as part of the planning permission application. This can take the form of building for example a community center and then providing a annual grant to it. Amusingly Eddie O'Connor who runs one of the bigger wind developers offered swimming pools to the locals.

Again - the problem here is almost the bribe element to it and where do you stop. Should anyone who lives near a unpopular structure get a bribe? Say a dump? What about a pig farm. I've even heard people complain about slurry. This money ultimately comes from electricity users.

I do think communities should be able to benefit from community wind schemes though or similar.

The tax in France has the advantage of being applicable to private as well as State agencies I suppose.
Developers negotiating with promises is obviously catastrophic and dangerously close to a bribe, whereas the State controlled tax option can be regulated and a guarantee of some kind of fairness.

I guess the State can also decide and draw some kind of guidelines (which presumably, with planning regulations, already exist) as to where developments/infrastructure are on an acceptable to unacceptable scale.

If a social dividend system is in place here, it is kept very quiet, too quiet, since people like my MIL for example, whose house is beside a high voltage line, possibly to be upgraded to higher voltage, have not been informed and have absolutely no notion of how the changes might improve the area they live in.

Same with the pylons debate, haven't heard any counter argument to the effect that a community centre, roads, or a civic amenity may be improved should the locals tolerate pylons on their land.

Maybe I just missed it in all the articles about it. I'm in the South East.

I've heard about people who moved out to the country only to give out about slurry smells too, or the local pig farm... tough shít as far as I'm concerned (!), these are rural aspects that were there long before these people moved and that are to be expected, just like dirty and damaged roads due to farmers going about their business, or the odd cattle tramping around your garden.

We have cattle and horses (lots of horses let graze in forestry around here) regularly ruining our garden, it's annoying, but it's up to us to get a cattle grid if it gets too much. It's part and parcel of settling in the country.

Pylons, turbines, and other large infrastructure (apart from farmers' sheds !) merit debate and compromise.

edit : and of course, everything has to be done within reason. No swimming pool will help someone accept a massive pylon or turbine unreasonably close to their house, and no sports centre will help a village accept that their beautiful hill or forest is destroyed by unreasonable development.