Lynn Jarvis, one of the neighbours near the proposed windfarm at Bodangora, says the community is not being given enough time in Monday’s public meeting to air their views.
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A public meeting organised by the NSW Planning Assessment Commission will be held at the Wellington Soldiers Club from 3pm.
“It is unfair, we are only given five minutes to discuss these issues during the meeting,” she said.
Speaking on behalf of people who will be affected by the proposed windfarm, Mrs Jarvis said there were pages and pages of problems with the project.
“For a start the health, sounds and visual effects. Ninety-four per cent of the submissions to planning are against this windfarm. Priority must be given to the community and landholders to discuss and debate this,” she said.
She also believes if the meeting doesn’t go their way and the NSW Planning Assessment Commission pushes on with the Bodangora windfarm, there is still time to fight it.
“There is no way we will give up, far from it. There are many avenues of appeal. I guess there will be a big number of supporters who are against the windfarm there on Monday,” Ms Jarvis said.
The proposed project has deeply divided neighbours and farmers in the Spicers Creek and Bodangora area.
Senior development manager for the windfarm, Infigen Energy’s Frank Boland says locals must be heard on the project.
“It is important to distinguish between genuine local concerns and those of increasingly professional anti-wind activists whose strategy seems designed to confuse and inflame the debate on wind energy,” he has written in a letter to the editor.
Mr Boland says benefits of the windfarm for the community are wide ranging.
“The benefits of producing pollution-free electricity are immediate and localised.
“During the construction period the windfarm will employ approximately 100 workers, many of who will be sourced from local businesses and contractors,” he said
“The Bodangora windfarm, once operational, will employ about six permanent site technicians and generate on average 310 Gigawatt hours of pollution-free electricity per year - enough to power the equivalent of 40,000 homes (or twice the combined residential consumption of Dubbo and Wellington every year).
“If we sought this equivalent electricity from coal, it would result in about 280,000 tonnes of carbon emissions being injected into the atmosphere,” Mr Boland said.
Mr Boland will also front Monday night’s Wellington Business Chamber meeting at the Cow and Calf Hotel. He will talk about the business model for the community there.
