Wind farm 'expert' grilled
Complaints about shortcomings in expert evidence have become a recurrent theme at the board of inquiry considering Contact Wind’s plans for a 184 turbine Waikato wind farm.
On the sixth day of the hearing at Tuakau yesterday, that continued when Contact witness Chris James the “lead wind farm civil designer” and a Beca-employed consultant, according to his evidence-in-chief copped a verbal mauling from commissioners.
They even went as far as questioning his credentials and qualifications to be giving evidence on civil engineering matters for the Hauauru ma raki west coast project.
Board chairman Judge Jeffrey Smith was particularly pointed with his comments, as he took issue with the perceived uncertainty created by the lack of detail in Contact’s evidence.
“You might end up with a Clayton’s consent one you can’t do anything with,” he warned Mr James.
The commissioners further expressed their displeasure after learning Mr James was not actually a qualified civil engineer, but was providing expert evidence on earthworks, roading and soil disposal, which were all essentially civil engineering matters.
Some 106 kilometres of roads need to be constructed for the project, with 47 hectares put aside for soil disposal.
Commissioner John Lumsden, who is a civil engineer, said he found it difficult to rely on such evidence when certainty was required around the likely effects of the project.
Commissioner Diane Menzies was more scathing.
“I still can’t understand how a firm like Beca thinks it is appropriate for a $1 billion project that advice from a qualified civil engineer is not needed,” she said.
Contact is seeking consent for the project on the basis of vague preliminary designs, with flexibility to make changes as it evolves.
But Dr Menzies criticised Contact’s assumption that the imposition of consent conditions would solve any problems, and these could be sorted about later with interested parties such as district and regional councils.
“Did you consider the board are interested parties?” she asked.
“Yes,” Mr James replied.
“Then the details are needed at this stage,” Dr Menzies said.
Mr James said final designs were difficult to achieve “at this point in time” and many decisions would need to be made on site.
Judge Smith also lamented the dearth of accurate and detailed engineering evidence.
“At the end of the day, when it comes to the final design, you are asking the board to leave it to you,” he said.
“The question of what is reasonable and appropriate is vital under the RMA (Resource Management Act). The difficulty is there is no power to delegate that decision-making power to you or anybody.”
Judge Smith said there were “credibility issues’ about aspects of Contact evidence on earthworks and roading. He observed that Contact appeared to be relying heavily on council information and devolving responsibility to council officials for many civil engineering aspects of project design.
“You might have a $1 billion design swinging on one council employee who has had a bad coffee that morning.”
Mr James said he stood by his earlier evidence that Contact’s philosophy was to ensure that it had a full understanding of the project’s potential adverse effects in order to be able to make properly informed decisions on appropriate design.
Perhaps the most telling questions of the day came from Mr Lumsden.
“Do turbines require a power supply to operate?” he asked.
“I am not sure,” Mr James replied.
Mr James also struggled to answer a question from Commissioner Gina Rangi, who wanted to know who the wind farm project team leader was.
Mr James said he was not sure, but that was a question better addressed to a Contact employee.
By BRUCE HOLLOWAY — Waikato Times
6 May 2009
Tags: Wind power, Wind energy
Some possibly related stories:
The copyright of this article is owned by the author or publisher indicated. Its availability here constitutes a "fair use" as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law as well as in similar "fair dealing" exceptions of the copyright laws of other nations, as part of National Wind Watch's effort to advance understanding of the environmental, social, scientific, and economic issues of large-scale wind power development. For more information, click here.
