Valley of the Winds Wind Farm

The valley will be ruined by the site of these turbines. The concept photos are absolutely devastating. Surely the locals will face harsh devaluation of their properties. A beautifully natural part of the world will be lost forever. Please reconsider the effects that this visual pollution will have on an already beautiful part of the world.

I strongly object to the proposed Valley of the Winds wind farm project

I object;
To the visual impact caused by such an invasive amount of windturbines in this project, and the obscene size . They will spoil the beauty of this valley which so many of us, who live here and those who travel through it, appreciate.

To our harmonious community , who come together when necessary, ie, 2017 Sir Ivan Fire, being fractured, even now, before this project has even been approved.

To the pathetic photomontages, ( the turbines being so poorly illustrated ) , both placed on public display in the EIS and that we received, when having requested a more realistic image more than once. It is a con!

To the appalling amount of compensation for the town and to the people who are not hosting turbines, but are visually impacted by them.

To the footprint left , from the commencement of freighting the materials to their destination, and all the inputs with construction, maintaining, operating, and disposal when decommissioned.

To the fact that having turbines of this magnitude will detrimentally affect us from relying on having water-bombers come to our aid if a fire breaks out on the west to south western side of Coolah township and the surrounding district , threatening us once again like the 2017 Sir Ivan fire did.

To our land values being affected.

To the inconsistent dealings from the Project manager , causing great confusion amongst the community.

To the mayhem that will take place with such a concentrated area of development, ie road maintenance and services ie. Our small hospital with mostly no doctor, supermarket, chemist etc. It will be an overload.

To the idealistic attitude that being in a REZ will attract larger industry and professionals, is ridiculous. Coolah is a small country town with wonderful, relevant services and has the beautiful Coolah Tops National Park, SO FAR, unspoilt. It is what it is, and we enjoy it.

This is only a few of many objections.

Visual impact
Decreased surrounding land values

I object to the Valley of The Winds wind farm project for the following reasons. Firstly I believe the project is in the wrong location, bad for our landscape, environment and poses an unacceptable risk to the residents of Coolah. The Bushfire Risk Assessment (EIS – Appendix K) of the Valley of the Winds wind farm project, makes no mention of the effect on aerial water bombing.

I am a member of the RFS and was involved with the fighting of the Sir Ivan bushfire in 2017 and witnessed the effective use of the aerial water bombers. They were truly impressive and made a huge difference in the protection of homes and infrastructure.

Coolah has a proposed 76 turbines at a height of 250 metres approximately 5 kilometres to the west south west of the town. This is one of the more common directions of approach for a fire. An inspector at the RFS Aviation department concerning water bombing, stated that the pilot in command makes a “safety determination” with regard to obstacles. Their training is to stay away at least one and a half times the height of the obstacle. In this case it would be 375 metres making the turbines 750 metres apart plus the width of the aircraft before it would even be considered. Add in a smoke factor, he said that if the turbines were in a cluster as they are here, then it would be highly unlikely that a pilot would go anywhere near them. In Victoria, pilots keep a distance of 3 kilometres from turbines. This would compromise a very important and effective fire management tool for the town of Coolah.

Also not mentioned in the Bush Fire Risk Assessment in Bush Fire Ignition sources 2.4.2 is the fires that the turbines start themselves. From several sources (Power Engineering International and Windpower Engineering and Development), it is known that 1 in 2000 turbines will catch fire every year. Fire is the second leading cause of accidents after blade failure according to Fire Trace International.

The proposal has 175 turbines at a height of 250 metres either side of the busy Black Stump way, well known by travellers for it’s beauty. They will dwarf the valley which is 140 metres (measured by drone) half way up at Hannah’s Bridge and 200 metres just south of Coolah. The effect on this landscape would be enormous because of their height and their concentration. The visual impact study was poorly conducted, has no regard for visual impact in my opinion, with photo montages ineffective or misleading in the report and they have been taken from obscure locations. The writer of the report did not set foot on our property to check for visual impact, even though we are right in the middle of the proposed project. We were told we would be compensated for visual impact. Then we were told we would not be visually impacted because we were outside the 4.95 kilometre line drawn on the map and yet according to the montages, we will see 80 plus turbines through 160 degrees from our living room which has seven metres of glass to take in the beautiful view of the valley.

Poor consultation with surrounding land holders – a proposed 400 person work camp was only found out about by the neighbours of this proposal when the Planning department sent out a map of the project to all the people in the district with association to invite comment.

Endangered birds – a proposed Waste Management facility at Leadville was rejected because of the presence of the Red-tailed Black Cockatoo. There have also been other studies in the area noting habitat of at least eight other threatened or endangered species.

Lastly I disagree with the project because I believe there are better alternatives. Micro renewables should be encouraged instead of concentrated, high impact developments like this which are not at the point of consumption. The benefits of these systems, is that the generation of power is done closer to point of consumption so there is no longer the requirement of the unsightly transmission lines to link infrastructure. This in turn makes our power systems way more robust, resistant to outages and terror attacks as we would no longer require a grid.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

I work for a company renowned for its sustainability action that has managed to build completely self sustaining office buildings in the heart of the Sydney CBD. I feel wind farms are short term solutions to renewable energy that rely on enormous amounts of infrastructure huge distances from their intended consumers. We should be focussing on self sustaining buildings or communities and localised, integrated systems. I’m also concerned with the transparency of the entire lifecycle of the turbines and how the materials of decommissioned plants are removed and treated as waste. Renewable energy is a misleading term if the infrastructure used to produce it can’t be recycled and in turn becomes harmful to the environment.

Not the correct area for the project for the size of the project.
Will effect the community In many aspects for agricultural produce and safety of the town from fire hazard

I strongly object to the proposed Valley of the Winds project. The Dunedoo area is a strong rural community based on agricultural production. It is a very scenic and peaceful area which is the reason that the locals choose to live here. The proposed project and associated infrastructure is going to have a negative impact on our unique community.
Local land values will be negatively impacted. The owners of the project should undertaken to bench mark local land values against rural land in areas not adversely impacted by large scale wind farm projects and compensate local land owners for any down turn in value. It will be divisive to our close local community in that landholders who are receiving compensation for having turbines placed on their land will be at odds with their neighbours across the fence who are receiving no such compensation. Farmers on a daily basis with have to look at the turbines where previously they enjoyed beautiful rural views. This will have a negative impact on their emotional well being.
Currently there is a massive shortage of rural labour in our local area and as with other mining and development projects, the higher wages offered in these sectors will cause a further drain on the already critically deficient local rural employee pool. Farmers will struggle to find suitable casual workers which will have a negative impact on the operation of their farms.
Local businesses in Dunedoo rely heavily on the local farming community buying their products - if the local farmers don't have the labour to carry out the day to day running of their farms and their land prices are adversely impacted by the wind turbines then the local rural supply businesses will also be negatively affected.
The Valley of the Winds project does not create long term benefit for our local rural community it serves only those looking to profit in the short term and will have a long term negative impact on our community - creating division where there was previously none and adversely affecting the overall landscape of the local area which is so special and unique.

There is an agricultural ALA located less than 1.2 nautical miles from the nearest turbine. This ALA is the one of the largest in the district with access to 200,000 litres of water making it a critical fire fighting resource. Given its capacity it is used by aircraft operators for a variety of farmers in the district.

Why is this ALA not mentioned in the EIS?

I object to this project because these big ugly steel monstrosities pollute the landscape which I will see most of them. Power should be generated in the area it is needed not pollute prime farm land with wind /sola farms and big power lines.

Ibbai Waggan People object

The proposal to install 370 plus wind turbines (Valley of the Winds and Liverpool Range wind farms) in this small predominantly agricultural community is Environmental vandalism.

I implore you to do the right thing and reject the Valley of the Winds project.

Wind Farm Projects have been discussed in the Coolah Valley for over 20 years now. As well as the Coolah Valley having excellent wind, and high ridges with little vegetation, it provides a good option to assist with the Renewable Energy Targets. We have been very disappointed to see when travelling through the Hunter Valley, the impact that Coal production has had on the environment and the surrounding landscape. We don't believe Coal is the answer to Australia's power needs, moving forward. We would rather see Wind Towers than massive holes in the ground and the accompanying smog.

We believe Wind Power is a greater cleaner greener option to help the world. It will provide Coolah more benefits that issues. The hosting land holders will of course receive Income benefit however they are still able to run their farming businesses. It will assist these businesses by drought proofing (providing an income when the inevitable drought affects the farm) . It will also provide employment and financial benefits to the town of Coolah and many flow on effects. It is also important to address, as part of the project, the housing and medical requirements of this town, as a result of the influx of more people, by the Developers and Local Government.

We wholeheartedly support this project. Let's get it happening.

Thank you for the opportunity to make a submission.

I believe that all the wind farms will destroy the small town beauty, valley views and threaten all the birds species in it.
We all ready have 220 wind turbines cunningly put through by tilt renewables under the project name of liverpool ranges wind farm(no body objected because they didn't realise this project was just out of town) an added 148 turbines on the other side of Coolah will dramatically ruin the landscape.
Coolah is a small town known for its charm an beauty an it will lose all that with giant industrial wind turbines visually polluting the landscape an killing bird species coolahs slogan is "where the eagle soares" they won't be doing much of that after hitting a wind turbine.
I can't describe how strongly I'm against the wind turbines.