2023-06-22 17:40:32
“This project is a social and environmental injustice from the start,” says Dr Hagit Olanovsky, an expert in health and environmental risk management, on the Energix company’s wind turbines in the north of the Golan Heights. The project is at the center of recent protests by the Druze community against the project, claiming that it will cause heavy damage to nature and the quality of life of the residents in the villages in the area.
“It doesn’t matter if these are Druze, Jews or Muslims. No one deserves to live inside a turbine farm like this,” claims Ulanovski, noting that in her opinion “this is a project that should not have been implemented and should be canceled.”
Dr. Hagit Ulanovsky (credit: Association for Ecology and Environmental Sciences)
According to Ulanovski, despite the compensation that will be given to the entrepreneurs from the state, the environmental and even economic benefit from canceling the project will probably be more worthwhile, “It is too late, and to do it the state has to put its hand deep into its pocket. But even after compensation, it may be economically better to produce solar electricity In the Golan Heights and not electricity from the wind. They won the tender many years ago, when the prices of solar electricity were much higher than the prices of wind energy. Today solar is very cheap and storage will no longer be expensive – which will ensure a regular supply of energy even when the sun goes down.”
Ulanovsky emphasizes that the disruption to the residents’ quality of life will be very significant, and that the issue was not properly examined in the planning process. “This is not just an aesthetic matter. No one has seriously tested the effects. The turbine farm that will be built right inside the plantations will have a significant impact on Druze agriculture.
“The Ministry of Agriculture, with the exception of the construction phase, apparently the situation will be restored without damage, but this is not true: these are plantations, where the trees take several years to grow before they bear fruit. This is not a field that is plowed with a tractor and a closed cabin with anti-noise headphones. This is a plantation that is worked on Manually, and the whole family works there together pruning and picking the fruit. In most orchards, the work will become unbearable. It’s like being on a ship that is constantly moving. Some get sick and some don’t, but it’s not that they enjoy it. That’s what’s going to happen in most of the orchards.”
“This is beyond ‘unpleasant’, these are turbines that are built at a submerged level – between Majdal Shams and Buqaata, it is over 1,000 meters high, but it is in an area similar to a pool, which means the rotating blades of the turbines will be at the height of the windows of most of the houses in Majdal Shams . It’s not that you’ll see the mast, but you’ll see spinning blades in front of the window – you’ll see them spinning in front of your face, and it’s not one or two turbines, but more than 20.” He will not come to pick cherries from under the turbines.”
“The World Health Organization has determined that the noise of wind turbines is a nuisance that should be taken into account, and may cause significant health problems,” Olanovski notes about the health risk in the project. “If you had a factory in front of your house, which is not too loud but very unpleasant for you, all day and all night, and hides most of the landscape and the environment, doesn’t that harm your health? It would be a significant nuisance. It’s just like a huge factory in front of your house. It’s not noise Very strong, but he’s in your face, all the time.”
In addition to harming the residents, according to her, there is a danger of significant harm to the environment, information about which has been updated since the approval of the plans. “A few years ago, when the plan passed planning approval, there was no concrete information about the risks of the wind turbines in the Golan Heights harming birds, and then we could only predict how many birds would be harmed according to studies conducted in different parts of the world. Now, after wind farms have been activated in the Golan Heights, we know how many Birds are injured and die from turbines – and this is worse than we thought about during the planning stage. I have no doubt that it will not be successful in the Druze territories either, from an environmental point of view.”
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