They came from 30 km around to express their disgust.
In procession, they plunge into the middle of pines, oaks and beeches in the direction of a concrete crater about twenty meters in diameter where a 200 m high wind turbine is to be erected.
One of the 17 turbines that the company Moulins du Lohan (belonging to the Canadian group Boralex) will install in the forest of Lanouée (Morbihan), the second largest forest in Brittany (3800 hectares).
“Before, there was peat here, now it's a path with a meter of stones,” observes a resident. He is moved by the clearings in this reservoir of biodiversity. “Batrachian corridors were bulldozed for hundreds of meters. Further into the forest, a path leads to another wind turbine base covered with a concrete sarcophagus to protect it. It has been four years since the work, which began in 2015, was suspended by the administrative court of Rennes under the impetus of local residents and the Society for the Protection of Landscapes and Aesthetics of France (SPPEF). The judge had canceled the building permit arguing that the project area covering 9% of the massif was in a natural area of ecological interest. More than 60 species of birds are listed there, some of which are rare.
An inconsistent project
In 2013, the Territorial Service for Architecture and Heritage of Morbihan issued an unfavorable opinion on the project because it was "totally incoherent due to its out-of-scale dimensions and such as to irreparably damage the landscape quality of this remarkable forest" .
The public inquiry had, for its part, noted the "high concentration of wind farms in the area" and a "strong feeling of saturation" of the population.
“We already have 16, so we've done our part.
We are not a trash can!
»Grumbles Anne-Marie Cléro, deputy mayor of the town of Mohon, located 1 kilometer away.
In this sparsely populated area in central Brittany, and therefore popular with wind power operators, we feel sacrificed for the benefit of urbanites, on the altar of the development of renewable energies and private interests.
Never listened to.
"They take us for beggars", vituper Noël Le Breton, of the association Vent de panique.
Read alsoFour months to erase seven wind turbines from the landscape in Hérault
After appealing the decision, Boralex won its case in 2019. Seized in cassation by the opponents, the Council of State finally gave the green light to the park last April. It highlights the "major public interest" of the project to increase the production of renewable electricity, in this region where local electricity production only covers 8% of needs. A decision hailed by Boralex, which has already spent 60 million euros. The group plans to reforest "an area of 12.25 hectares which will compensate for the clearing of the 11.4 hectares necessary for the construction and operation of the wind farm". Commissioning is scheduled for 2024.
"A terrible case law for all forests in France," said Anne-Marie Robic, delegate of the SPPEF, who wrote to the President of the Republic. His last hope to end an "ecocide".