The May Oberon Council meeting saw the largest crowd of residents in the public gallery that anyone could remember. They were there to hear a presentation from the Forestry Corporation about a plan to locate wind turbine generators in state forests.
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In 2021 the legislation overseeing the operations of the NSW Forestry Corporation was amended to allow the Corporation to allocate parcels of land in state forests for the purpose of assisting the increased use of renewable energy in NSW. Four forest areas were identified by the Corporation as suitable because of their proximity to infrastructure (transmission lines, roads, ...) Those four areas were Sunny Corner, Oberon, Orange and Bondo (midway between Canberra and Tumut).
There are always objections to wind farms wherever they are proposed. Many of these objections have been responded to elsewhere such as noise, can't be recycled, fire, danger to birds and wildlife and also a lot of health issues. Many of these objections have been addressed in research done by Professor Simon Chapman from the University of Sydney, and you can see some comments from him here.
The two main issues raised at the Council meeting were amenity - the effect of wind turbines on the landscape - and the lack of community consultation and communication.
Councillor Lauren Trembath has had long experience dealing with controversial developments. "You need to spend more time talking to the community, rather than just announcing what is going to happen. The idea of having a shopfront somewhere where people can call in for information sounds nice, but we've already experienced that with another development and having a place where people can just collect brochures isn't good enough," she said.
Frank O'Connor has been examining the proposal for a long time. "Wind turbines stand 230 metres tall, so poorly situated wind farms in Oberon Shire could have a substantial impact on the landscape and environment. Oberon is a tourist town and one of the attractions is looking out over masses of pine trees. Will it still be attractive with tall white windmills sticking up through the trees?" he asked.
The total amount of forest land across all four areas that can be used is 1,600 hectares, representing 0.7 percent of the 225,000 hectares of softwood plantations across the state. No sites can be established in native timber forests, either plantations or old growth.
The Corporation is intending to invite proposals (which they call "opportunities") for the operation of the renewable energy resources, with the following provisos set out in legislation.
The sites:
- are within a pine plantation,
- when combined, are limited to less than 0.7 per cent of the plantation estate,
- offset any land affected with replacement plantable land at a two for one scale, thereby increasing the area of public land dedicated to growing pine plantations,
- maintain Forestry Corporation's ability to meet its timber supply commitments.
Proposals will be evaluated by the relevant government departments and the NSW Government development application process will apply. Forestry will have no part in selecting successful applicants.
The sorts of installations are:
- Wind turbines
- Large scale batteries
- Pumped hydro (highly unlikely)
- Solar arrays (not possible because they take up plantable land)
The only option currently being considered is wind turbines.
This is not the first wind farm to be proposed for the Oberon region, with the 47 turbine array at Paling Yards still glacially working its way towards the release of an Environmental Impact Statement.
See more:
The Forestry plan is something totally different, with towers distributed across forests rather than a large, sparse array as at Paling Yards. (47 turbines distributed across 4,600 hectares of grazing land.)
The Forestry Corporation released information about the proposal in early 2022 and you can read it here. The presentation to Council was essentially the same as on the web site and is available here. The Corporation's response to questions is to refer to the content of the web site and presentation.
The Corporation is in no hurry to get the wind towers up, as can be seen by this timeline.
The Forestry timeline shows that there is still a long way to go before anything happens, but whatever happens the community is demanding that they be kept informed and their concerns are addressed. There is little doubt that the plan will go ahead. The Forestry Corporation is not a "consent authority" and has no say in who gets to build the sites or where as long as the impact on their operations fits the rules.
If this goes ahead it won't just be an issue for Oberon. There will be effects on Orange, Lithgow and Bathurst (on either side of Sunny Corner) and the towns around Bondo. And once those four sites are up and running there are a lot more pine forests across the state.
While it's important to let Forestry and councils know about any objections, it is equally or even more important to communicate with the local state Member of Parliament. Everyone wants renewable energy, but the costs, both monetary and socially, have to be considered.
