Environmental Impact Assessment of the Sierra Sur Wind Power Plan

Environmental impact assessment of a large-scale project, consisting of the joint construction of six wind farms and their transmission infrastructures.

In total, the project encompasses forty-two wind turbines, four substations, two load breaking centres, two medium voltage overhead lines and five high voltage overhead lines. All this was on mainly rural land, varying between a mainly forest profile and highly anthropised land mainly due to agricultural use.

A full analysis of the project was carried out first, including construction solutions and possible resulting liabilities. The surroundings were then defined, studying the operation of the environment in the absence of the project, followed by a review of the possible liabilities and interactions generated by the coexistence of both.

After this, the potentially impact-causing actions of the project and the potentially impact-causing environmental factors were identified, as were the cause-effect relationships between the project and environmental factors, thereby collecting the necessary data to create an Eisenhower matrix and qualitatively evaluating the impact.

Finally, corrective, precautionary and compensatory measures of the environmental monitoring programme were defined in order to verify and estimate their operational capacity.

An examination of technically feasible alternatives was also included with their corresponding presentations, justifying the solution adopted and addressing the analysis of the potential impact of each one. This resulted in an environmental inventory and description of the key ecological and environmental interactions focused on humans, flora, fauna, soil, water, air, climate factors, material assets and cultural heritage, the landscape and the relationship between the aforementioned factors.

The full study was complemented by attaching an extensive acoustic study of the implantation areas, a landscape restoration plan and, for this project in particular, a request for temporary occupancy and compatible use of drovers’ roads.