Farmers and locals have clashed with executives for a 90 turbine wind farm to run from Binalong to Bowning at Bowning Town Hall last week. A number of companies were present at the meeting to represent the Wind Prospect-led project who were met with passionate locals against the wind farm.
Local landowners questioned the executives about property value loss, noise pollution, fire potential, environmental damage and the threat to local wildlife including opposition from Indigenous leaders. It has further been reported that Wind Prospect made “secret” financial deals with landowners which has been opposed by neighbours. Further reports say, according to them, Wind Prospect recently signed up several residents to host more than 90 giant turbines between Binalong and Bowning, while leaving nearby properties out of the negotiations.
Local sheep farmers who were reportedly not included in the initial negotiations said they are facing the prospect of structures nearly the size of Sydney’s Crown Barangaroo towering over their land.
Those living near the site demand similar compensation due to a loss in land value. On Tuesday morning, NSW Premier Chris Minns responded to these claims. “We don’t want to steamroll over anybody. Obviously, if private land is being used, then the farmers who own that land have to be paid for it, they have to be compensated,” he said. “I also have to balance this idea that if we delay even a month, if it’s six months, if it’s 12 months, the people who repay are mum and dad energy users across the state, not to mention manufacturing, not to mention thousands and thousands of jobs. “If we lose a day in the energy transition it has massive, massive implications for people’s bills.”
Emma Webb, a third generation wool grower between Boorowa and Yass and President of the Binalong Bowning Community Action Group, said, “We formed this community led group to stop the Bendenine Wind Development and to protect the community from it’s irreversible harm because this project is just too large, too close, and too harmful and it is totally incompatible with the needs and future of this region.
A project like this is not renewable energy integration, it’s the industrialisation of rural Australia and we want to give voice to what is wrong with the renewables roll out in regional Australia. “If this project goes ahead this area will become an undesirable place to live and work and visit and we want to protect the communities, the lifestyle, the farming communities that people come to Yass for.
“Yass Valley isn’t an industrial junk yard. We have over 400 turbines opera-tional, approved or proposed, but we are not one of the five renewable energy zones where the renewable projects are meant to be done, so we get none of the protections that those zones get in terms of coordinated plan-ning and infrastructure.
“Farmers who have worked their entire lives care for the land and whose entire legacy is tied up in that land who feel an over-whelming sense of powerlessness. “For most farmers, their farm isn’t just a business; there is a deep connection to the land there that has been disrespected and the stress and the dread that everyone is feeling is not fuelled by conspiracy theories or conjecture or any of that nonsense because we can talk to people living with these turbines. Locals and our friends, and this proposal is far from the first wind turbine project that this region has seen, so we are no longer naive as to how these developers operate, nor are we naive about the huge impact.
“We know that turbines are made from fibreglass and plastic resins and they degrade over time releasing microplastics and studies have estimated that up to 540 grams of microplastics per blade per year and this is all contaminating soil, water and entering agricultural produce, threatening food and fibre production.”
A Binalong resident said, “I don’t think it was as wild as what it was reported to be. There were a couple of people that were emotional about it. They had a couple of farmers there from Rye Park that spoke to the group and told the meeting to keep fighting it. “For the majority of the meeting people were respectful and asked pretty good questions I thought.
“As a group and direct neighbour group, fortunately for now, everyone seems to have stuck together as a group and members of the community. It’s still early days for us. “Our issue isn’t with the neighbours and the people building them, there’s no resentment toward them, it’s just companies. They seemed to have come in and assumed that it’s a forgone conclusion without any consultation with neighbours and about what they think and having some respect for them.
“Where I live and a lot of the neighbours, we are going to have five of them within a couple of km’s of our house. “We’ve only met with them once and it was a very vague meeting where they didn’t commit to anything or any turbine locations. The ad that is in the paper is the proposed locations and once it is all cleared, they can move them. “It’s ridiculous that they don’t have to stick with where they are stated in the map where it is.
“The people that are doing it at the end of it aren’t going to be the people or the company that are trying to set it up now. I think that worries a lot of people. It’s just the fact that no-one really gets to have a say. Our voice isn’t heard. “You know what it’s like trying to get anything built, all the hoops that you have to jump through. I understand that it’s a State significant project and all that stuff but the issue that we have as a community and as neighbours, is multi-national companies building these things without any consultation.”
Even those in favour of Australia’s march towards net zero have said that it should not come at the expense of rural towns. Dr Paul O’Mara, a former economist with the federal Treasury and now a local at nearby Goondah, claimed a loss of land value totalling $100m. Several recent property sales have reportedly also settled for lower than market value. It has been insisted that the project is necessary to keep the NSW energy grid running.
In a statement Wind Prospect said it “recognised there are differing views” on the project but that it would continue to engage “respectfully and transparently with the community”.
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