Rye Park Wind Farm

I herein object to the Rye Park Wind Farm Development on the followings grounds as outlined in the attached file. In summary the Environmental Assessment is false and misleading. The public consultation process as outlined in the EA is misleading. The development is a threat to the local environment and maybe economically unviable.

I object to the Rye Park Wind Farm, as I think current policy and legislation need to fairly set in place before going ahead with more wind farms in NSW. As it stands currently wind farm companies due not have strict guideline to adhere to and follow. While properties hosting the wind farm do benefit financially, there no protection for surrounding properties that are affected by the wind farms in both financial terms and quality of living. .

I object to the Rye Park Wind Farm on the basis that it divide communities on a unproven technology that is taking over our rural landscape away from all Australians. The NSW government need to start listing to your rate payers and local politician and review the subsidising of all wind farm company's before we are or living in a industrial wasteland . The high devaluing of our homes and property's is of great concern and should be taken as personal attack on our lives. Within your environmental assessment it seems to me that my wife and children are of no importance. I know we all need to make changes and it upsets me that Canberra politician can push a 90% reduction of greenhouse emission onto the NSW surrounding population when if the tables were turned and were pushing this onto Canberra residents they would be hunted out of office.

See attached document

I strongly object to the placing of these wind turbines anywhere near residences other than those wishing to host the turbines. They are obtrusive and interfere with people's right to live peacefully where they have chosen to. To place a turbine that will annoy and dominate a beautiful landscape is criminal. If I want to build a house that is out of character with the landscape I have no chance, yet these huge companies gain state approval to place a monstrous development that is totally out of character with the landscape and kills many forms of bird life. Disgraceful. Further, they are heavily subsidised and inefficient. Without these government inputs they are totally unviable. The state government has a duty of care to look after it's communities and approving these farms within distance of non hosting homes should be dealt with at Law by way of a class action to ensure they are placed in isolated areas where they can affect no one.

Why hasn't the NSW Government legislated to protect adjoining landholders.from property devaluation, visual impacts and health caused by wind farms.

I object to a Wind Farm Developer just selecting an area with nor consultation with land holders in the vicinity. Health effects, property devaluation and visual pollution are not taken into consideration at all.

I object to this submission.

This project has raised significant community concerns that are not adequately addressed. The project has divided the community, and despite consultation and environmental impact assessments being completed the proponent of this project cannot guarantee that local residents will not experience significant negative impacts.

Local property prices will be significantly impacted negatively if they are not hosting a turbine. The section on property values is breathtakingly inadequate. This is an extremely important issue raised by many stakeholders during consultation and the project proponent has provided no evidence of attempting to address these concerns, rather they have simply selectively quoted from a 5 year old NSW Valuer-General report on property prices that was inconclusive. It also attempts to quote precedent from 2007 to claim that property value is not relevant in consideration of this project.

There will also be significant visual impact with this project, particularly on non-involved homes located within 2km of turbines. A simple look at the landscape and visual impact assessments show that very particular photos have been used to show the visual impact on not hosting properties. Cloudy skies have been chosen to try and mask the impact of turbines, as well as photo shopping them into the pictures in a manner that makes them stand out the least. Pictures should be provided showing their visual impact in the morning, mid-morning, noon, mid-afternoon and afternoon also in different weather conditions - not just cloudy skies - but clear skies, sunrise, sunset, rain etc.

There is also inadequate accountability surrounding predicted noise levels. Any number of experts can claim to specify the noise impacts and decibels at certain times at certain distances, but nobody can explain or give local residents details of exactly what this means. How noisy is it going to be inside your house when you have a turbine less than 2km away, what about outside? As a resident in Tarago I am experienced in living with projects that don't meet what the planning documents predicted. Approval was given for the Woodlawn Bioreactor based on predicted odor imacts which were completely inaccurate and we've now been living for years in a community that wakes up to the stench of garbage from Sydney.

Upon review of the documents, there are a total of 10 existing non-participating residential properties identified in these documents that fall within 2km of a wind turbines. NSW Planning draft guidelines on wind farms recommends that turbines not be located within 2km of existing residences. Locating turbines within 2km of this many dwellings is an unacceptable impact. All of these properties will have visual, noise and property value impacts with no compensation. Whereas neighbours hosting turbines will be compensated handsomely. This is seriously inequitable outcome.

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Submission attached

I object to the Rye Park Wind Farm, as policy and legislation needs to change, become fairer and have more substance prior to any further approval of wind farms. Because the draft guidelines are in fact only in draft form and the wind farm company has no formal requirement to adhere to them, there is a significant lack of protection for non-hosting properties forced to live near wind turbines. The constant stream of community division and community concerns that follow on with each new wind farm proposal should be a red light to the NSW Government that more needs to be done, yet every single rural community faced with a wind farm has its opinions and concerns blatantly ignored by the Government. Yet there is a feeling of deja vu with every new proposal. Sit up and listen NSW and construct a fairer system or you may yourself be living right next door to a wind turbine not of your choosing.

I have no objections to the wind farm in this area after checking out several other wind farms with in 200 kl for noise, health, and the overall look of them etc

1.Supposed to be 7 turbines within 2km radius of our home the closest being 1.3km. Maps are incorrect there are houses missing from maps that are effected.

2. Moved out to this property to get piece and quiet and to get away from industrial development and to provide a farming future for my children.

3. Forced into having these without no regards to locals opinions. Its all about Epuron.

4.Negative health impact on lifestyle and livestock.

5. Effects the endangered species that live here ie wedge tail eagles, micro bats, rainbow bee eaters and a vast range of bird life that we see daily.

6. Property values dropping or becoming unsaleable due to the turbines.

7. visited the Cullerin Range turbines and became ill from them when only being there for 10 minutes.
Myself and my family all were feeling the effects.
There were no livestock standing up or any bird life at all.
Why not put them on the Brindabella range then no one will be effected the roads and power lines already exist!!!

7. Photomontages are not true due to the size of the turbines and the way Epuron have stretched out the hills to make it look like they are not as close as you think this is misleading to the community and land owners. I am a land owner and I have not even been given one due to these being 1.3km away from my house. The corner of Cooks Hill and Rye park road monotages had a house that is deliberately removed from it suggesting no harm.

8. Wind turbines are old technology which has already proven to be inefficient and not cost effective overseas.

9. How can contracts be made with Epuron be still legally binding when the turbines will be sold to another company which has not had any contract made with land owners.

10. Who will pay for the decomissioning of the turbines? Who then pays for them to be removed and at what cost?
Turbine blades are non recyclable and have to be encased in concrete. At who's expense and left where?????

There is a lot to answer for!!!

My children don't want to be left with this mistake.

This is going to effect every one in the thousands of km radius.

The Rye Park Wind Farm
To whom it may concern.
We live in the Rye Park area and would like to say that we support Epuron's application for a wind farm in this district.
Like many others in district we can only see benefits that this project can bring to the district and the state. To us there seems to be a large silent majority that are in support of the wind farm or have no strong view against its construction. A number of state wide studies also indicate that a large majority of people are in support of renewable energy and wind farms.
I know that there is a well organized and vocal group of people (they call themselves the Landscape Guardians and number about 50 to 60) that are against the wind farm. They hold weekly meetings and have the ear of the federal MP who also attends these meetings. They have been spreading fear and miss truths about wind farms and seem to have some people convinced that we are all at risk of major health issues and community breakdown if the wind farm proceeds.
I attended one of their recent Friday night meetings were they invited the community to attend. They said that 100 people were there and of these 95 were against wind farms. From a quick look around the room I would say that about half those in the room were locals, while many were definitely not residents from within the area of this project, including some of the organisers. They use figures like this to justify their position.
I am sure that if a district wide confidential pole was done then the numbers would be much different. For example, there are about forty landholders and their families that will receive direct benefits from the wind farm if it proceeds. They and their families support this wind farm project and would easily number 100 people.
In summary I would like to say that I would not like to see a noisy minority influence an important process like the approval of the Rye Park Wind farm. This wind farm will harness the wind to power the states needs for many years into the future.
Rod & Ros Gibson
488 Grassy Creek Road
Rye Park
NSW

Refer attached

Whilst the approval of this development is obviously a fait-accompli, I do have some concerns with aspects of the development process. These relate to consultation, noise and transport.

Consultation: Despite living within 7 km of a tower site (or intact a number of towers) the first I heard of the development was from a concerned resident flyer drop several weeks ago. From the submission there was clearly no consideration that residents to the east of the development get their local information from Gunning/Crookwell, not Yass/Boorowa - I consider that there has been totally inadequate consultation to date.

Noise: Background noise levels appear to be based on more urban levels, with rural background noise often less than 20dBa in the evenings. As a resident "downwind" of the towers (the predominant wind is from the NW-SW) I am concerned that there appears to be no consideration made to extended transmission of noise during (frequent) periods of high transmissibility (esp when humidity is high and temp low). I am approx 10km from the Hume Highway/railway and get significant noise on a regular basis.

Transport: the southern primary route is listed as via Jerrawa Rd/Coolalie Rd. The description of both these roads in the transport assessment is misleading. Jerrawa Rd is in reasonable condition for a standard, sealed minor country road. However, there is often considerable amount of damage (i.e. pot holes) after rain events - and this is with very few heavy vehicles (a few trucks servicing local farms and the local school bus). The high rate of movement of heavy vehicles (up to 80T) is highly likely to destroy the local load. In the case of Coolalie Rd, the assessment of sealed/unsealed is misleading. On the proposed route, only 1-2km is sealed (from Jerrawa Rd) and the remainder unsealed. This road is normally in relatively poor condition (I will only take my 4x4 on it), it has a couple of very tight bends and a section over the hill (before the Bush's Rd intersection) which is very poor - esp in the wet.
Given the condition of the roads, it is unlikely that heavy vehicles will be able to exceed 40km/h (at most). The "minor" inconvenience to residents will be an extra 15 min delay each way - not much except that a trip to Yass for me is already 35min (80 min to work in Canberra). Given the complete lack of consultation to date, it is highly unlikely that residents will be advised of proposed movements and will just need to live with it.

Overall, this proposal is good for the company and good for ACT residents (who will feel good) but will provide no gain for locals, who will need to live with the adverse affects. It is entirely incredulous that an area zones RU1/2, which specifically cannot have industrial development on a relatively small scale, is able to host a massive industrial complex due to the fact that it is a SSMP

To whom it may concern.

I wish to oppose The Rye Park Wind Farm to be built by Epuron.
I believe the proposal is wrong in so many ways and I hope the following words will also convince you and others that it should never be built.

The Environment.

Lets face it the proposal by Epuron has nothing to do with saving the environment, it is about a large multi national company making massive amounts of money from the Australian public, if there was no money to be made the farm would never be built.
If you were to measure the true carbon footprint of a wind turbine you would see it is huge, if you take the measurements from the beginning of the process mining the ores and metals then shipping them all over the world to be made into a turbine, then transported and erected on a huge concrete slab on site.
If the turbines were to run 24 hours a day 7 days a week we could shut down a coal fired power station, this would reduce the carbon footprint, but due to the known fact that the turbines rarely run and the power station must still be in service the the original carbon footprint will never be paid back to the environment.
When Australia works out as the rest of the world has that wind turbines are for show and not for go they will be decommissioned leaving their carbon footprint even bigger.

The position

A good part of the reason I purchased my property was the fact it backed onto a nature corridor, some of the proposed turbines will be within 2 kilometers of the corridor putting the native fauna at risk.

The impact on me

I live in Sydney, I'm a shift worker and work in a manufacturing plant, this is a very noisy environment and I believe it is a unhealthy environment, this is the reason I purchased my rural bock, it is a chance for me to unwind , relax in the serenity of the bush and live a normal life without the drone of background noise affecting my daily life and a good nights sleep, with one of the turbines being within 2k's of my property I may never again know the peace and quiet my family and I have enjoyed for the past 10 years.
I had planned to build my dream home on my plot and retire to the area, with the background noise I would now suffer it would be like working for the rest of my life.

Not in my backyard syndrome.

Many will think that is all it is, it's not, if the proposal were for a solar farm this submission would be in favour of the proposal, my property is 100% solar and I love it, it have no affect on the wildlife and makes no noise, I tried a small wind turbine and the power output was pathetic and very unreliable

XXXX XXXX XXXX.

Their web site tells how good they are at their job, what a good job they do of keeping the community and the affected parties informed, well I say bull crap, I will have a turbine within 2k's of my property and I found out about the proposal at the Royal Dalton Hotel, come on I am not that hard to find, is there a reason Epuron made no effort to find me or even leave a note on my front gate ? I'm sure if I owed them money they would not take long to find me.
I understand parts of the local community that are not directly affected being in favour of the project because of the money being offered by Epuron, what about me and my neighbours ? this will affect all aspects of my life and the lives of my children and grandchildren.
In all parts of society people will prostitute themselves and I'm sure there will be some in our community prepared to prostitute the local hill for a few gold coins while the rest of the community will suffer with their legacy.
Epuron is on this project to make huge amounts of money and they are offering a pittance to the community to try and buy favour, can they be trusted ? their web site tells me they are good at their job but they could not be bothered contacting me, they thought it would be less hassle to buy favour from the unaffected in the community, is this a good way to do business in Australia ? will they follow through with any promises made ? if my experience with them is anything to go by, run, run a long way away, they are not to be trusted.

It is un-australian to let the big guy with all the cash squash the dreams of a hardworking family, please don't let it happen this time.

Yours Sincerely
Peter Hanson
Rolex @ Jerrawa

I don't think there should be any further wind farm developments in NSW until the planning process is overhauled. I am gravely concerned about the current inequities in the planning process with:

draft guidelines that have been draft for over two years;

the priority to meet targets which means wind farms are imposed on communities;

how the current planning process disenfranchises communities and divides people irrevocably;

how there is no real or lasting benefit to the community with the power sold elsewhere;

the token consultation activities conducted by wind farm companies;

the inability of affected communities to really have a voice;

the double-standards of the ACT Government with its reverse auction for wind energy, while no wind farms are planned for the ACT, and how this weights the planning process in favour of the wind farm companies;

the profoundly negative impact on communities and the very people who have made the decision to forgo city-life to live the rural dream, who have paid a premium for land, who have invested substantially in having a low carbon footprint (e.g. composting toilet, tank water, dam and solar power) and who care about the environment.

the profoundly negative impact on the environment with the construction of what are essentially industrial structures with associated infrastructure, such as power sub-stations, power pylons, roads and increased traffic.

Director-General

NSW Department of Planning and Infrastructure

GPO Box 39

SYDNEY, NSW, 2001

Re: Rye Park Wind Farm Project Application - Application Number 10-0223

Please consider the Wind Turbine Turbulence and how that affects living conditions of surrounding families.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHl_0s4qqUY



Subject: footage of tip vortices shedding in a snowstorm - captures the pulsing nature of the sound energy


this is really interesting http://www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/2014/06/video-light-sheet-visualizes-snow-swirl-vortices-reveals-airflow-around-large-wind-turbines.html

a visual representation of the pulsing nature of the sound energy (tip vortices shedding) from the blades of a 2.5MW wind turbine in a snowstorm.

You may be able to use it somewhere to demonstrate that the pulsing sensation so many residents report feeling is real, and can be visualised.


the research paper associated with it is here:


1. Nat Commun. 2014 Jun 24;5:4216. doi: 10.1038/ncomms5216.
Natural snowfall reveals large-scale flow structures in the wake of a 2.5-MW wind turbine.

Hong J1, Toloui M1, Chamorro LP2, Guala M3, Howard K3, Riley S4, Tucker J5, Sotiropoulos F3.
Author information:
11] Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory, 2 Third Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55414, USA [2] Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Minnesota, 111 Church Street SE, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA.
21] Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory, 2 Third Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55414, USA [2] Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1206 West Green Street, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.
31] Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory, 2 Third Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55414, USA [2] Department of Civil Engineering, University of Minnesota, 500 Pillsbury Drive SE, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA.
4Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Minnesota, 111 Church Street SE, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA.
5Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory, 2 Third Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55414, USA.
Abstract

To improve power production and structural reliability of wind turbines, there is a pressing need to understand how turbines interact with the atmospheric boundary layer. However, experimental techniques capable of quantifying or even qualitatively visualizing the large-scale turbulent flow structures around full-scale turbines do not exist today. Here we use snowflakes from a winter snowstorm as flow tracers to obtain velocity fields downwind of a 2.5-MW wind turbine in a sampling area of ~\n36 × 36 m(2). The spatial and temporal resolutions of the measurements are sufficiently high to quantify the evolution of blade-generated coherent motions, such as the tip and trailing sheet vortices, identify their instability mechanisms and correlate them with turbine operation, control and performance. Our experiment provides an unprecedented in situ characterization of flow structures around utility-scale turbines, and yields significant insights into the Reynolds number similarity issues presented in wind energy applications.
PMID: 24960397 [PubMed - in process]


Submitted by
Sam McGuiness
"Willowmere"
Boorowa 2586

Ph 02 63855241

Being fifth generation farmer and my grand-daughter now being a seventh generation farmer in this area, I strongly disapprove of the proposed wind farm developments in heavily settled areas. Wind farms are known to have severe effects on amenity and general living conditions, thus affecting the land value dramatically. For an industry that can only survive through legislated subsidies (REC's), I believe the subsidy should be ceased immediately. Wind turbines do not reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the electrical sector.

Yours sincerely,

Mr Edwin Kelly esq
'Hazeldene Pastoral'
Rye Park 2586