Paling Yards Wind Farm

Project Name Paling Yard Wind Farm
Application Number - SSD – 29064077
Assessment Type - State Significant Development
Development Type – Electricity Generation – Wind
Local Govt Area: Oberon

Department of Planning & Environment
Locked Bag 5022
Parramatta NSW 2124

I am writing to object to the Paling Yard Wind Generation project on the basis that the EIS is deficient in areas as follows: -

Consultation
I cannot understand how the EIS was assessed for completeness and appears that due diligence has not been exercised by the Department regarding a very key area of the EIS, community consultation.

Appendix S Social Impacts Assessment could not meet a completeness check when the engagement references data from 2004 and 2011 and to the withdrawal of the previous SSD in June 2020 which is totally irrelevant to the current project in 2023. There has been scant community engagement aside from door knocking ‘consultation’ 10 to 15 years ago and a community information session held in the Village of Black Springs in July 2022, 23km from the township of Oberon during business hours.

In addition, Global Power Generation Austalia (GPGA) have not engaged with local business or community groups throughout the LGA and it appears to be a total failure of the planning process with regard to engagement. The Planning Guidelines clearly state for State Significant Projects – plan early, engage as early as possible, ensure engagement is effective, ensure engagement is proportionate to the scale and impact of the project, be innovative, be open and transparent about what can be influenced and implement the community objectives.

Demographic Data
The demographic data quoted is out of date Census Data – 2006, 2011, 2016 but does not reference the most recent Census 2021.

Heritage
The Heritage Report is deficient with no reference to a Living War Memorial, the O’Connell Anzac Memorial Avenue of trees or the O’Connell Urban Conservation Area. The Heritage assessment only references the actual site of the project at Paling Yards.

Transport Plan
The transport plan and size of the components is inconsistent in the EIS. The component size and heights do not match and would appear to use old information from previous Proponent applications – Site acquired 2002 with infrastructure at 60M hub height, environmentally assessed in 2014 with 90M hub height and now 150M hub height 2024.
The O’Connell Road has many ‘informal bus stops’ as a rural area and there appears to be no transport study provided other than traffic for the Abercrombie Road access to Paling Yards. The O’Connell Road from Bathurst to Oberon is the main route for work, medical and other services and in particular the route is used daily for local school children via the ‘informal bus stops’ all along the route for Schools in both Bathurst and Oberon. The whole route should have been assessed for impact with increased traffic and transport of blades with Over Size Over Mass (OSOM) vehicles (8882 trips in the table Traffic Generation Assumptions for the wind turbines and blades) and the over 40000 trips documented in the EIS.
The O’Connell Hotel has been designated as an ‘emergency stop’ in the Transport plan and this would block access to the local buses and parents in the area who use this community hub for daily pick up and drop off. This location is used and deemed the safest location with road reserve, telephone and proximity to people to ensure safety of the children as well as safe clearance from the road and heavy traffic used by large trucks transporting from the various factories, Quarries etc.

Planning Portal
The community have experienced ongoing issues throughout the 28-day exhibition period with access to key EIS documents that was acknowledged as a problem by Mr Anthony Ko, Project Lead, who endeavoured to find work arounds with a proposal to send the documents via USBs to Bathurst and Oberon Council that was totally impracticable.

The search function on Google, Edge, Safari, Bing, Yahoo to reference the most common search engines sent you to a URL that does not allow the EIS and documents to be downloaded. The Planning Department are aware of this issue and did not think it was not fair or reasonable and dismissed the problem as a fault of community understanding but in fact the reason searches were occurring this way was because of the lack of consultation or awareness of the project and that these channels were being used to get the relevant information.

A small extension of 4 days was granted as a make good for this issue and a Planning spokesperson put out a statement on a local radio station 2BS stating the problem was unique to this project only.

The community have been disadvantaged as there is no way to determine who attempted to make a submission and could not and this portal issues fails to meet the key objective of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act that clearly states ‘is to provide increased opportunity participation in environmental and planning assessment. This portal issue could be impacting other SSD projects if search is being used as opposed to the belief of Planning that a link would be provided by the proponent, Council or a newspaper article to get the community to the right place to access the EIS documents when in fact search is a very common method used to access information.

Outside the designated Renewable Energy Zones (REZ)
This project is not located in the Central West Orana Renewable Energy Zone identified in the CWORP 2041 and needs to be explained to the community as there are other projects planned by State Forestry Corporation that will not be in the REZ either.

Yours sincerely
Lauren Trembath

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Please see the attached submission from Garrick Hawkins on behalf of Mayfield Garden.