July 23, 2012
Australia
Australia
Windfarm meeting fails to convince residents
ABC Western Plains | www.abc.net.au 23 July 2012
ABC Western Plains | www.abc.net.au 23 July 2012
A group set up in response to a planned wind farm near Wellington says a public meeting hasn’t convinced it the development is safe.
About 220 people travelled from as far away as Mudgee and Orange to hear about Infigen Energy’s plans to build 33 turbines at Bodangora.
Michael Lyons from the Bodangora Wind Turbine Awareness Group says there were addresses from a host farmer from South Australia and the company.
He says due to technical problems residents were unable to hear from a doctor about the noise impacts of turbines.
Mr Lyons says the information was enough to make some people change their stance.
“I don’t think anyone will be more inclined to be supporting turbines, I don’t think they, Infigen put their argument over well enough to change people’s minds but, I think there could have been a few people sitting on the fence who came along and went ‘oh, well they’re not as good as I thought they were’.”
He says his group will now lodge a submission against the proposal.
“We are working tomorrow and any other spare time to at the back of the coal face on the computers working on the environmental assessment, pulling it apart and putting up our argument to the department of planning that this project should definitely not go ahead.”
Infigen Energy has sought to assure the community the planned wind farm won’t damage human health.
The company’s Senior Development Manager, Jonathan Upson, says an acoustic consultant brought in by the lobby group presented information on levels of infrasound – low level sound that is blamed for human ill health.
He says the infrasound levels recorded at houses near windfarms were 100 times less than what humans can perceive.
“If there was any problem with wind energy and health it would have been discovered decades ago in Europe and America where they have been operating turbines for decades. I mean Australia is not the proving ground for wind energy.
It has proven to be an extremely safe form of electricity generation.”
Mr Upson says he believes most people who attended had already made up their minds.
“But I spoke to some neighbours who came to the meeting and they actually seemed like they were in favour of the project.
The issue is meetings like that will tend to draw the opponents of a project rather than the supporters and we’re still very confident we have the great majority of the community behind us.”
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/07/23/windfarm-meeting-fails-to-convince-residents/