• Wind farms ruin hundreds of hectares with a “fish skeleton” of road networks - access roads are 30 metres wide to get turbines onto individual turbine sites - North Qld wind farm
by
Megan Trousdale
• Windmill turbines to go on these hills called, Hills of Gold
When former Greens leader Bob Brown wrote an opinion piece in The Hobart Mercury in 2019 opposing a wind farm on Robbins Island in north-west Tasmania, it raised eyebrows among those who instinctively consider environmentalists and renewables as natural bedfellows.
Dr Brown’s capacity to call out the potential destruction of endangered birds, including the Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle and white breasted sea eagle, and migratory birds like the swift parrot and orange bellied parrot, gave credibility to the suggestion that there are alternatives for poorly sited wind farms where biodiversity costs are too great. Site selection shouldn’t be left up to developers motivated by profit and Robbins Island was a “step too far”.
Mayeta Clark from ABC’s Background Briefing covered community backlash from unlikely sources against the location of massive wind farm projects in the Northern Queensland Renewable Energy Zone (‘The wind farms angering renewable energy fans’).
Renowned wilderness photographer and environmental campaigner Stephen Nowakowski was commissioned by an energy company building Mount Emerald wind farm to photograph the project. He was shocked by what he saw. Instead of the native scrub he knew well from bushwalking, scraggly trees, open grasslands and rocky ridges, he saw broad roads connecting circular clearings at the base of 50 wind turbines.
After photographing two other wind farms disturbing hundreds of hectares with a “fish skeleton” of road networks he has lost faith that state and federal environmental protection frameworks are adequately applied to renewables proposals in high value conservation areas.
• Majority of local community oppose wind turbines on the beautiful, forested Hills of Gold near Nundle, NSW
• Hills of Gold Preservation Inc members who gathered on Nundle Recreation Ground to demonstrate their opposition to proposed Hills of Gold Wind Farm
The same prioritising of profit over biodiversity is proposed at French multi-national Engie’s Hills of Gold Wind Farm near Nundle, a small community of 600 people near Tamworth. The town has made a name for itself as a gold rush heritage and nature-based tourism destination.
For nearly five years volunteers with landholder group Hills of Gold Preservation Inc have found themselves calling out omissions, mistakes, and inconsistencies in thousands of pages of an Environmental Impact Statement, Response to Submissions, and now an Amended Development Application.
Volunteers have staffed a pop-up office daily for the past three weeks to explain red flag issues to community members dropping in to see the wind turbines plotted on an old school paper topographic map showing the steep contours of the mountainside and ridgeline earmarked for industrial infrastructure. This includes roads for oversize overmass vehicles, concrete batching plant, operations and maintenance building, substation, battery energy storage system and towers to support transmission lines.
The volunteers even organised a public meeting when a formal request to the developer for a public meeting was refused.
It was the first public meeting held regarding the wind farm proposal since October 2018, hosted by the Department of Planning and Environment. The wind industry prefers one-on-one conversations and keeping opposing community factions apart.
The public exhibition period for the Amended DA closes on Tuesday, 13th December.
Community members who long ago made conscious decisions to down size, live off-grid or on affordable land growing some of their own food, are among unlikely wind farm opponents.
Again the potential environmental destruction is a key motivator for opposition.
• Locals with Hills of Gold in the background
Hills of Gold Wind Farm directly neighbours Ben Halls Gap Nature Reserve and “over 135 metres outside the closest extent of the development footprint” is Ben Halls Gap Sphagnum Moss Cool Temperate Rainforest, newly listed as Critically Endangered under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. The Critically Endangered status is not referenced in the developer’s Amended DA.
The ecological community has a very restricted geographic distribution in Ben Halls Gap Nature Reserve and nearby Ben Halls Gap State Forest.
The Approved Conservation Advice makes special mention of the threat of fire, drought, storm damage, weed invasion and disturbance by humans and non-native animals. Sedimentation from soil disturbance, changes in water availability, and competition from weeds are ongoing major threats.
Yet earthmoving for roads and foundations is proposed on the neighbour’s land.
* Greed versus local community of humans, birds, trees, insects
National Parks and Wildlife Service expressed its concern regarding 28 turbines posing “Moderate Risk” to local threatened bird and bat species. “...A key question is whether a moderate level of risk to threatened species is acceptable adjacent to high quality habitat on national park?” For this reason, NPWS recommended removal from the proposal of all turbines neighbouring Ben Halls Gap Nature Reserve. The developer removed one turbine to create a 1.2km corridor, but a local veterinarian compares that to installing a pedestrian crossing and expecting birds and bats to use it.
There are other flora and fauna at stake. Some 447 hectares of vegetation would be disturbed, including 190 ha of native vegetation and 46 ha of koala habitat that is critical to the endangered species survival. Meanwhile local ecologist Phil Spark is studying the significance of the high elevation range, including Crawney and Hanging Rock, for remnant breeding populations following the serious decline of koalas at Gunnedah on the Liverpool Plains.
• Beautiful, ancient trees and endangered plants . . . or greed?
Residents are concerned about the clearing and soil disturbance on steep country required for proposed Hills of Gold Wind Farm Western Connector Road and infrastructure including:
substation,
concrete batching plant
battery
operations and maintenance building
transmission lines/towers/easement, and
Wombramurra Creek, one of eight potential waterways between the New England Highway and the project area on the Great Dividing Range, that would need a substantial new bridge to carry oversize over-mass vehicles with the capacity to withstand flash flooding.
The developer proposes a combination of biodiversity offsets and stewardship agreements to achieve no net biodiversity loss.
But The Integrity of the NSW Biodiversity Offsets Scheme Parliamentary Inquiry found that there are multiple problems with the scheme, and questioned its capacity to achieve a goal of ‘no net loss’ of biodiversity.
The inquiry found the scheme facilitates development rather than protecting irreplaceable biodiversity values. It heard that, “New South Wales's biodiversity is under threat. We cannot afford to hasten the extinction of what biodiversity remains through a scheme that trades off threatened species for cash.“
The 2021 State of the Environment report lists habitat loss and clearing as significant threats facing Australia’s biodiversity
An official review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act says Australia’s main environmental law is failing both the environment and developers and contributing to the unsustainable decline of Australia’s habitats.
In Mayeta Clark’s story James Cook University adjunct professor and evolutionary biologist, Dr Tim Nevard, says, “Biodiversity is the buffer at the end of the tracks that stops the runaway train of climate change from bursting through.”
“Destroying biodiversity in order to have greater amounts of wind energy is a complete oxymoron. It’s ridiculous. So we shouldn’t be doing it.”
Three NSW Renewable Energy Zones are declared and another two planned, all of them oversubscribed with renewables expressions of interest.
Hills of Gold Wind Farm is not in a Renewable Energy Zone.
Rural communities in high value conservation areas are asking is the development process of Avoid, Mitigate, and Offset enough? Where biodiversity impacts are unacceptable they ask that a fourth process be an option, Stop.
BY TOMORROW: Please consider making a submission to Hills of Gold Wind Farm Amended Development Application by Tuesday December 13th, 2022:
https://pp.planningportal.nsw.gov.au/major-projects/projects/hills-gold-wind-farm.
Megan Trousdale
References
https://www.environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/sprat/public/publicshowcommunity.pl?id=176&status=Critically+Endangered
https://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/threatened/communities/pubs/176-conservation-advice.pdf
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-12/queensland-wind-farms-clearing-bushland/100683198