Concerns over wind farm guidelines

www.abc.net.au
March 28, 2012

Lake Macquarie Council will write to the state Planning Department outlining its concerns over the Government's Draft Wind Farm Guidelines. The Planning Minister Brad Hazzard has described the draft document as the "toughest wind farm guidelines in Australia and possibly the world". But the guidelines have been criticised by environmentalists and renewable energy lobbyists as unnecessarily restrictive. Greens Councillor Hannah Gissane agrees.

"We've endorsed a submission to the draft guidelines exhibition which would pick a part the bits and pieces of it that make the process too onerous", she said. "We've also endorsed wind farms as a key mechanism in achieving 20% renewable energy by 2020. "And that any guidelines should be part of a strategic facilitative approach to renewable energy".

Councillor Gissane says the guidelines are too tough and criticism of wind turbines is not warranted. "Our beautiful Lake Macquarie has ash dams, has coal-fired power stations, has coal mines, has subsidence all from non-renewable energy sources", she said. "I'd like to see future for the city where the glint of a solar panel and the whirl of a wind turbine were actually features of the city".