Association annoyed by leaflet against wind turbines

“Three days before the referendum in Rainbach, state environmental lawyer Martin Donat had an ‘official notice’ distributed to households. It uses well-known misinformation to try to create a mood against the wind power project and the energy package for the municipality of Rainbach. The official environmental impact assessment procedure is even being bad-mouthed,” the association says angrily.

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Comprehensive information

Environmental lawyer Martin Donat does not want to have anything to do with deliberately bad-mouthing wind power: “It’s about comprehensive information. The basis for a vote should be knowledge,” he says in an interview with OÖN. In general, it is time to devote ourselves to binding energy spatial planning in the state. Principles such as the non-binding wind power master plan are not practical: “There must be binding principles where wind power is desired and makes sense. But there must also be very clear exclusion zones,” he says. He sees one such area in Rainbach. The dimensions of the planned wind turbines are particularly problematic for him. “260 meters in total height is about twice the size of the Mariendom cathedral in Linz and four times the size of the parish church in Freistadt. This alienates the landscape and changes it technically,” he writes in his circular: the energy transition can get by without building in the Freiwald.

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In the leaflet, he also states that saving the climate is not the only motivation for building the wind farms: “Money always clouds the view a little. Compensation should only be discussed after the process. Financial arguments are the wrong motivation for voting,” he says, locating economic interests behind the plants. The necessary grid expansion would then have to be borne by the consumer.

Association detects fear-mongering

The association sees the current leaflet as a deliberate attempt by the environmental lawyer to scare people: “We note that the photomontage in particular shows a false representation of the project. Neither the proportions nor the locations are correctly represented,” it says in a statement.

“Serious visualizations can be found in our project newspaper. Others will be presented in the course of the environmental impact assessment procedure and examined by the authorities. A separate chapter in the EIA will be devoted to the protected asset ‘landscape’,” it says. Polemical accusations are to be investigated by experts in the official procedure and, above all, refuted.

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“Thanks to the community package, electricity generation from emission-free sources will also benefit the community of Rainbach and its residents. That is why we hope for the highest possible voter turnout and a clear yes to the energy future,” it concludes.

Voter participation desired

Donat is also hoping for a high voter turnout – but with a different outcome. “We should vote on facts and not on moods,” he says. But it is precisely this influencing of the mood that the association accuses the environmental lawyer of: “A Photoshop visualization without taking into account the actual perspectives, which are also visible from the ground, only serves to scare people and create polemics,” the association is convinced.