July 23, 2008
New Zealand
New Zealand
A steady flow of people wanting to know more about Mighty River Power’s planned wind farm in the Turitea Reserve near Palmerston North showed up for the company’s first information day about the project yesterday.
Many of them were property owners in the vicinity of the planned development on a ridge 11 kilometres south-east of Palmerston North.
If the project gets the green light, turbines will be visible on the skyline from Fitzherbert Avenue.
Mighty River Power is hosting information days this week and next, Tuesday to Thursday, 10am to 2pm and has now added information evenings from 6pm next Tuesday and Wednesday and a daytime session on Saturday at 10am.
The state-owned company has identified 136 possible turbine locations for up to 131 turbines in the reserve and on neighbouring private land.
They would stand at a maximum height of 125 metres (tower and blade), potentially producing up to 360 mega-watts of power for the national grid.
Up to 25 hectares of indigenous vegetation could be cleared to allow construction of the wind farm, if resource consents are granted.
The reserve supplies 60 percent of the city’s water.
The project would involve constructing two substations, constructing and upgrading 59km of internal access tracks and would involve 1.45 million cubic metres of earthworks.
There would be 145km of underground cabling connecting the turbines to the substations and the farm would be connected to the national grid at the Linton substation.
By Grant Miller
Manawatu Standard
23 July 2008
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2008/07/23/turbine-plan-open-days/