A small town is pleading with Ireland’s top planners to save their picturesque community from a biogas plant.
Gort in Co Galway is a stone’s throw from Coole Park Nature Reserve as well as a hotspot on the Burren Discovery Trail and the Wild Atlantic Way.
But locals fear all that will change if Derry-based Sustainable Bio Energy Ltd wins its three-year fight to put a central anaerobic digester with a flame stack higher than the church spire in their skyline.
Ciaran O’Connell from the Gort Biogas Concern Group said: “The stakes are too high. It will affect too many people and benefit too few.
“The development will be within 800m of the town square and it will have a flame stack on top of it that will be higher than the church spire.”
Sustainable Bio Energy Ltd first sought permission to build the plant Gort in 2018. But when Galway County Council asked for clarity on a number of points, including why they chose the town with a population of 3,000, the application was withdrawn.
Then in 2019, a second request for planning permission was submitted to the council.
GCC refused it highlighting a number of reasons, not least of which were two special areas of conservation close by, an Environmental Impact Assessment that was lacking and the heavy traffic the plant would cause.
Council also said it wasn’t “satisfied the development would not be visually obtrusive and adversely impact” the area’s beauty.
But those behind the central anaerobic digester plant appealed the decision and now the future of Gort lies in the hands of An Bord Pleanala. An agent representing the biogas firm did not respond to our request for a statement.
