There was a community meeting on Thursday night at Bookham Memorial Hall, for property owners in the direct path of TransGrid’s proposed HumeLink project.
Meeting Convenor Peter Brunskill instructed those in attendance to pass on to their neighbours that the right time to fight the current plan is now before it is too late.
“I guess if we’re going to fight it, we’ve got to fight it hard now.”
“Once that’s set in stone, it’s all over red rover for us,” said Peter.
The current plan for the project is to replace the existing solitary circuit of 330 kilovolts of electricity with two circuits of 500 kilovolts of electricity, passing hydroelectricity from the Snowy Mountains to Sydney, taking the indirect route through Wagga Wagga and Yass.
The landowners in attendance raised concerns regarding the size and appearance of the infrastructure and health concerns for both themselves and livestock, which will spend long periods underneath and nearby, significant radiation.
“There’s going to be some serious electromagnetic radiation whatever your point of view on that is, there are going to be double circuit lines running through our property,” Peter stated.
The committee’s aim is to work with landowners impacted by the project as well as TransGrid to define a route that has the least impact on landholders and communities, with the goal of running the line on public land away from community and productive farmland considered the pinnacle of this.
Special guest of the meeting via Zoom call was Sydney environment and planning specialist Andrew Beatty, who described the 70-metre-high transition line as “the biggest transmission towers in the state”.
“You’ll be entitled to compensation obviously from the easement, but that money doesn’t necessarily get you back.”
“What I would generally suggest to people is, if you’ve got a group of continuous landowners, and they work out where they would prefer the route to come from, and there’s some logical alternative to it that’s the proposition you want to put to the infrastructure component right now.”
“The more people who are continuous in the property sense, the stronger your bow,” he said.
Those opposed to TransGrid’s current plan believe rather than running the lines through private properties, the route from the Snowy Valley should be more direct and go through the state forest and national park.
Yass Valley Times first brought this issue to the broader community’s attention in July 2020 with our story “Powering through Yass Valley”
Story Excerpt: Yass landowners in the pathway of a new 70-metre high transmission line say the HumeLink project could be a disaster if they and others are not consulted with.
Yass Valley councillor Kim Turner and fifth-generation farmer Nan Betts are among the owners of 600 properties within the 200-metre-wide corridor identified by TransGrid for the 70-metre high electrical transmission line.
“…Residential blocks (are in) the path of this dirty, great big transmission line and they are going to be greatly devalued,” Cr Turner said speaking as a private citizen.
Now in May 2021, TransGrid’s project timeline confirms it is currently in consultation with landowners and expects to be well into 2022. TransGrid also expects to have an Environmental Impact Statement on public exhibition by mid-2022 and have approval from the Minister for Planning by the end of 2022. TransGrid states construction would start in 2024 with the project commissioned in 2026.
Max O’Driscoll
