NSW flags wind farm planning changes as it seeks to move turbines

NSW Planning Minister Pru Goward has flagged new planning rules for wind farms as she laments that wind turbines are turning regional areas into “industrial zones”

Goward, a noted opponent of wind farms who has tried to prevent the ACT government from funding wind farms in the region, is also trying to force Chinese project developer Goldwind to move 9 turbines at its Gullen Range wind farm near Crookwell (pictured).

The government is demanding the turbines be taken down and moved – in what would be a first – because they were not constructed where the planning approval allowed. Some were constructed 150m away from their approved siting.

Goward also flagged more investigations into the “health impacts” of wind turbines.

Goward made here comments in an interview with 2GB’s Alan Jones, himself a vigorous anti-wind (and anti-solar and anti CSG) campaigner, who has elicited Joe Hockey’s “utterly offensive” comment about wind turbines, and Tony Abbott’s complaint about the cost of renewables.

“You know how I feel about turbines, and they’re all through my electorate and I’m very conscious of the impact that they are having,” Goward said in her interview with Jones.

“And that is why we now have given the company (Goldwind) 21 days to do what is right and move at least nine that we recognise no Court could defend.” If the turbines are not moved, the NSW government says it intends to take legal action to force them to do so.

Jones, typically, railed against what he said were the “health impacts” of wind farms, saying they were dangerous to anyone living within 10kms of a turbine.

“There’s any amount of scientific evidence, that anyone within 10kms of wind turbines has health problems,” Jones said. “And there’s international scientific evidence, which your Department won’t present to you, which they ought to, that will dramatically prove that this is a public health disaster.”

Goward replied that she had asked health minister Jillian Skinner to investigate the health impacts of wind farms. “Jillian Skinner’s Department has been very involved in looking at that research,” she said.

“And we’ll have more to say about the future of wind farm development, particularly in regions where, as you say, there are lots of small land owners, who came to enjoy the landscape.

“We’re not talking about primary production, we’re talking about people who came for lifestyle reasons and they now find they’re region turned into an industrial zone.

“So that’s why the Department will now run the Community Consultation processes …”

As RenewEconomy noted earlier this week, it is the hatred of wind farms that is driving much of the Coalition’s push against the renewable energy target – at both the federal and the state level.