DHis ruling on the operator of the Haut-Languedoc Natural Park wind farm caused a sensation in France. After years of litigation, an appeals court in Toulouse granted residents six-figure damages. The verdict is final. The complaint was filed by a Belgian couple who bought an old farmhouse in a small community in a natural park in 2004. In 2008 and 2009, six wind turbines were installed 700 to 1,300 meters from their property. According to their own admission, women and men did not notice this at first.
However, when a small forest was cleared in 2013, before that, these forests blocked the unimpeded access to facilities, and health complaints increased significantly. The couple complained of various visual and noise nuisances and physical illnesses such as headache, dizziness, fatigue, heart palpitations and tinnitus, and attributed them to the wind farm. After all, the doctors visited could not determine any medical history that explained the discomfort. In May 2015, this was too much for the couple. It was forced to move. Her health has improved significantly.
Your subsequent damages suit was initially unsuccessful. A French court in Castres first admitted that wind farms are affecting the lives of residents. The nuisance will not exceed the usual level, especially because the minimum distance between the system and the residential area is observed. The judges also believe that there is no proven link between wind farms and health issues.
Call for “abnormal neighbourhood chaos”
But the couple did not let them sit back and watch. It called for “abnormal neighbourhood chaos”-and won. It can be seen from the judgments issued in July and now announced that wind farm operators have not only been sentenced to pay compensation for health problems. The judge in Toulouse also estimated that the loss of property value caused by the system was less than 30,000 euros. The total is more than 100,000 Euros. This is less than the approximately 350,000 euros requested by the plaintiff. Nevertheless, the verdict is considered unprecedented in France. On the one hand, residents are increasingly complaining about health problems caused by wind turbines. On the other hand, so far, no judge has so clearly attributed the damage to the facility and condemned the operator for obtaining the same amount of compensation.
Organized wind power opponents hope that the ruling will support them. The general minimum distance between a new wind turbine in France and its residents is 500 meters, regardless of the size of the settlement or municipality. In view of the increase in the height of new plants, increase is increasingly becoming a problem. Most importantly, politicians on the political right are mobilizing against the new wind turbines. So far, there are approximately 8,000 in France, far fewer than Germany, which has more than 30,000 systems.
In Germany, residents have also launched many civic initiatives against wind turbines. The core of their criticism is also noise, air currents, and allegedly neglected distances from settlements. Despite this, despite many public protests, there are only a few recorded damage claims against wind farm operators. On the contrary, the country’s lawsuit mainly targets municipal and regional approvals for wind turbines. These measures are designed to force municipalities and regional authorities to revoke issued permits or overturn plans for designated wind farms.
Various judgments of the administrative court led to a case law according to which infrasound emissions from wind turbines are “generally below the threshold of human hearing” and, based on the current level of scientific knowledge, do not in principle cause health risks. Anyone who uses this as a basis for compensation in a German civil court has previously failed in a district court.
