Wagga business wins top contract

Daily Advertiser
Friday 26/10/2007 Page: 33

WAGGA environmental business nghenvironmental has won an important contract to carry out the environmental planning and assessment of the biggest proposed wind farm in Australia. The Silverton wind farm, proposed by Epuron Pty Ltd, would be located west of Broken Hill and contain up to 400 wind turbines. Estimated to cost around two billion dollars, the project could produce up to 4.5 per cent of NSW's annual energy needs.

Requiring assessment as a major project under NSW environmental planning legislation, the project would power up to 400,000 homes, saving as much as three million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year. Over the past three years, nghenvironmental has worked with Epuron Pty Ltd on five other wind farm assessments - one located near Adaminaby, the others in the Yass and Goulburn areas.

Wind farms are a viable way to generate emission-free electricity and can have a much smaller environmental footprint than coal and gas-powered plants, nghenvironmental Wagga manager Eric Budde said. "They do have specific impacts however, that require serious consideration." Mr Budde said. "These include impacts of the visual character of the land, the community, compatibility with existing land uses, mineral exploration, Aboriginal archaeology and biodiversity values, among others," he said. He said nghenvironmental had begun work on assessing impacts in relation to the proposal at Silverton and would be carrying out additional field work at the site in November.