Ignitis wants to erect 10 wind turbines, each up to 280 meters tall just a few kilometers from the border of the Matsalu Rahvuspark national park.

The area lies within Haapsalu's area of responsibility, so an application has been submitted to the city to initiate a special plan, submitted by the Energiapark, a subsidiary of Ignitis Renewables and the Estonian company RNW Projects.
The wind farm would be fully financed by Ignitis.

"Right now we are applying for the opportunity to start environmental impact studies. This is the prerequisite whose basis will even make it possible to say whether building a wind farm in this area is viable, and whether any adjustments need to be made there specifically due to nature considerations," said Ignitis Renewables' Estonia community manager Elo Võrk.

Haapsalu mayor Urmas Sukles noted the planned development was inconvenient in terms of its proximity to three different villages, as well as the nature reserve itself.

"This application has come in, and we must talk about it. My personal opinion, and we have also discussed it in the city government – our opinion, then – is that it is very regrettable that an application of this kind came at all. It is in the middle of three settlements, three kilometers from each settlement, and three kilometers from the Matsalu nature reserve, so this is as wrong a place as it can possibly be," he said.

In fact under the city's comprehensive plan, there is no place in Haapsalu at all for industrial-size wind farms, the mayor went on.

"We have very beautiful nature at the shoreline and we have Matsalu nature reserve. We have birdwatchers, and we do not notionally have any space where these turbines could be erected without disturbing the surroundings and nature," Sukles went on.

Matsalu National Park is a nesting and migration site for many birds and a destination for ornithology tourists.

Ornithologist and nature observer Tarvo Valker said: "The very fact that the construction of a wind farm so close to Matsalu national park is even being seriously considered is completely unreasonable, because the bird conservation values that are here in Matsalu are so significant that the negative impact of the turbines would affect not only the local bird populations but would extend on a European scale. The effect of wind turbines on some bird species can extend five or even ten kilometers away. The bird-richest areas in fact in Matsalu are on the coastal meadow and at the boundary between water and land, that is, the areas closest to the wind farm. This negative impact is actually very well known even before thorough studies, because continuous monitoring has been carried out in Matsalu for 70 years."

Ants Ale, owner of the Tuulingu guest and holiday house in the Matsalu zone agreed. "The national park is known for its preserved values, and people come more and more to visit them in Estonia, since in Western Europe they have largely been destroyed. This would hit the entire nature tourism sector in Western Estonia, and in the bigger picture also throughout Estonia, since these nature tourists travel across the whole country," he said.

Võrk said that there are few areas in Estonia where wind farms can be built at all, while the area in question was reached through a thorough analysis of map data.

"In fact, very, very extensive analysis to clarify exclusions has already been carried out for this area. It could seemingly be suitable, but whether a wind farm can actually be built there now depends precisely on these environmental impact assessment studies," she said.

The final decision on initiating the special plan is down to the Haapsalu legislature, by vote.

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