The majority of citizens of the Upper Bavarian municipality of Marktl am Inn voted in favor of the planned Altötting wind farm in a referendum. According to the preliminary results, of the 1,612 Marktl residents who took part in the vote on Sunday, 970 or 60.17 percent voted for four new wind turbines on Marktl land in the Altötting forest. 637 or 39.52 percent voted against. Five votes were invalid, and voter turnout was just over 70 percent.
The market town with its almost 2,900 inhabitants is one of a total of seven municipalities in the Altötting district on whose lands the Free State, the Bavarian State Forests and the project developer Qair wanted to build the Altötting wind farm with an original total of 40 wind turbines. This prestige project of the state government in the Altötting Forest is intended to be by far the largest wind farm in Bavaria to date and to supply the extremely energy-hungry chemical industry in the Bavarian chemical triangle with at least a small part of climate-neutral electricity.
However, in an initial decision at the end of January in the municipality of Mehring, a two-thirds majority of the residents there voted against the plans. Ten of the 40 rotors originally planned were to have been located in Mehring alone. In view of this setback and the subsequent debates about a lack of commitment by Economics Minister Hubert Aiwanger (FW), he put more effort into the project. At the same time, Aiwanger, who is also responsible for state forests within the government, decided not to build any more turbines in order to appease residents.
The minister announced at a town hall meeting in Haiming that the minimum distance to the next settlement would be increased from 1,000 to 1,200 meters. Because the people in the small hamlet of Schützing were nevertheless afraid of being surrounded by wind turbines in the future, Aiwanger later canceled two more turbines that were to be built on Neuötting land. Schützing itself, however, belongs to the municipality of Marktl. After Aiwanger gave in, several Schützing residents called on their fellow Marktl residents to agree to the plans.
Another referendum could be held in the municipality of Haiming
The opposing position is represented by the initiative “Gegenwind Altötting”, which had already forced the Mehring decision and had also collected more than enough signatures in Marktl. Unlike in Mehring, however, the Marktl municipal council and Mayor Benedikt Dittmann (CSU) had rejected the identical wording of the citizens’ petition as inadmissible. The demand that the municipality should use “all legally possible means” against the wind farm plans was too vague for the councillors. Instead, the municipality had agreed with “Gegenwind” representatives on a council petition with the current question of whether the municipality should agree to the construction of wind turbines on a few precisely defined plots of land in the forest.
Nevertheless, the Gegenwind people left a panel discussion with Aiwanger and others right at the beginning in protest because there were more supporters than opponents of the project on the podium. In return, they received support from the ranks of the AfD. The initiative itself operates in a relatively non-transparent manner and shows little fear of contact with the far-right party and the lateral thinker scene. Some activists around the former spokesman and also their former lawyer have turned away from the initiative because of this.
Another referendum on the same topic could be pending in the municipality of Haiming. There, too, “Gegenwind” has been collecting signatures for some time, but has not yet submitted them – possibly so as not to fall into the summer holidays with the next referendum, according to speculation in the Haiming town hall.
The fact that such local referendums have such a large influence on the project, which extends far beyond the individual municipalities, is due to an older supervisory board resolution for the state forests. According to this, the state-owned company may not implement a wind project against the will of the respective municipality. Minister Aiwanger recently assured that the state forests would remain bound by this resolution for the Altötting wind farm in any case. At the same time, he could not promise that the regulation would be adhered to forever. Private forest owners only have to adhere to the legal regulations on pollution control anyway.