Goulburn River Solar Farm

I object to the project because it is to be built in an Environmentally Sensitive Area – adjacent Goulburn River National Park.

I write to oppose the Goulburn River solar farm on the following basis:
• Loss or land for better use – whether it is national park or farming
• Loss of biodiversity
• Inadequate compensation to the local community
• Too much development, funding and operating risk passed to the State government and therefore the people of NSW
• No financial contingency set aside to fund remediation of site and safe disposal / recycling of panels throughout its life and at the end of the project.
• Only adds 10 jobs during it operating phase and will redirect scarce and important trades away from where the community needs them during construction phase
• Dangerous reflection distraction for travellers on Wollara Rd
• Government subsidies (whether state or commonwealth) for private businesses presents a funding and operating risk to the people of NSW and Australia. If the operator goes broke without subsidies, their business is gaining subsidies from government, not building and operating a solar farm.

Please see attached submission.

I object to this project for the following reasons:
1. The loss of food producing land of which Australia only has 4% of its total land mass as arable land
2. the massive economic loss to the local community
3. EIS's are skewed to the proponent, therefore untrustworthy, because....
4. EIS's are taken by the grantors of the project as an absolute consideration of all aspects of the project
5. the environmental contamination of land by heavy metals
6. therefore, it can never be rehabilitated back to safe prime ag land
7. there is no fail-safe proviso that the end-of-life rehabilitation cost will be borne by the owner/lessees at that time protecting the local rate payer.
8. there is no proviso for the recycling of panels. batteries and other failing infrastructure
9. that the slave labour used to manufacture the panels etc is ignored
10. the complex is subject to leaking toxic substances into local water ways
11. Erosion from construction of similar solar farms has resulted in massive erosion that has destroyed neighbouring properties farming land
12. It is highly subsidised by the taxpayer for the benefit of off shore entities.
13. Power produced will not be Australian owned it will be owned by 100% profit driven multinationals
14. in reality, the practicalities of the present concept of re-newable energy production/storage are an ill-conceived, hysterical and an impossible practical goal to achieve with irreversible social, economic and environmental consequences.
15. At a stretch, all these renewable projects are very vulnerable to enemy attack, consequently very easy to render inoperable with little risk and more so when close to the coast as this one is.
16. Small modular nuclear reactors operating out of redundant coal fire stations using existing transmission lines will produce reliable power & far less loss of remnant ecosystems across Australia due to the extreme proliferation of wind, solar & associated transmission lines.
17. Please stop this madness.

I object to this project because and is not presented in order of importance :
1. The loss of food producing land of which Australia only has 4% of its total land mass as arable land
2. the massive economic loss to the local community
3. EIS's are skewed to the proponent, therefore untrustworthy, because....
4. EIS's are taken by the grantors of the project as an absolute consideration of all aspects of the project
5. the environmental contamination of land by heavy metals
6. therefore, it can never be rehabilitated back to safe prime ag land
7. there is no fail-safe proviso that the end-of-life rehabilitation cost will be borne by the owner/lessees at that time protecting the local rate payer.
8. there is no proviso for the recycling of panels. batteries and other failing infrastructure
9. that the slave labour used to manufacture the panels etc is ignored
10. the complex is subject to leaking toxic substances into local water ways
11. It is highly subsidised by the taxpayer for the benefit of off shore entities
12. in reality, the practicalities of the present concept of re-newable energy production/storage are an ill-conceived, hysterical and impossible practical goal to achieve with irreversible social, economic and environmental consequences.
13. At a stretch, all these renewable projects are very venerable to enemy attack, consequently very easy to render inoperable with little risk and more so when close to the coast as this one is.
14. For your own education, and maybe others, peruse the attachments.

This project sacrifices productive agricultural land in favour of providing intermittent energy to the grid using non-renewable materials sourced through a long, energy-intensive and environmentally destructive supply chain.

Mark Mills explains why the green energy transition is not happening. Trillions of dollars of expenditure have hardly moved the needle to green worldwide energy use.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDOI-uLvTnY

The limit of wind and solar power. Consider the amount of rocks that have to be processed in energy-intensive processes to build an electric vehicle!
https://www.youtube.com/embed/RqppRC37OgI

I submit a rejecion to the Goulbourn River Solar Farm located on Wollar Rd MerriwaNSW for the following reasons.
location is prime agricultural land primarily used for beef cattle and crop production. It borders the Goulburn National Park.
Wildlife from the National Park will be affected with higher traffic flow and at present when travelling this road often see numerous native wildlife hit, killed or mamed laying on the Ringwood and Wollar Rd and an increase in traffic will only bring further destruction to the native wildlife in the area. This is why the National Parks have rejected having road sealed in the area
With the solar farm it will no doubt also detract from the natural beauty of the area has, along with a large glare reflected from the solar panels which in turn will be a distraction to passerbys and locals of the area seeing the glare on a daily basis.
The use of less than adequate travelling infastructure with narrow roads, dirt sections and a higher volume of traffic flow will see the increase of vehicle incidents with larger vehicles believing they have an automatic right of way.
The common practice of solar panels while in the initial stages, Government and other bodies have NOT taken into account broken and damaged panels do not break down and will not be as easily disbursed back into nature.
Fire will be another major issue as the heat and glare could ignite a fire and while only small can spread fast especially in our dry months as seen with the devestation of recent bushfires.

At the end of the day we see another major company look to exploit a local community and add devision with in the local community as we have seen in the Hunter valley with mines continually employing people from outside the local communituies and this will be the exact same with this business.

I have attached files to detail my objection

I object to this project. It is not an environmentally sound project because it adversely affects the habitat of the Regent Honeyeater as well as removing critically endangered White Box - Yellow Box - Blakely’s Red Gum Grassy Woodland and Derived Native Grassland. Specifically 699.63 ha listed under the BC Act and 496.11 ha under the EPBC Act. The Project will also impact 73.98 ha of mapped important habitat for Regent Honeyeater (Anthochaera Phrygia) a critically endangered species. These species were assessed further as they are considered at risk of Serious and Irreversible Impacts (SAII)

Objection to the Goulburn River solar farm.
Please review the EIS 6.9.1.2 page 152 SISD safe intersection sight distance intersection Golden Highway and Ringwood Road.
The proponent states that a reaction time for a vehicle travelling at 100 kilometres per hour is 2.5 seconds and a distance of 262 metres is required. I live and travel this road including driving trucks and the visibility from the Golden Highway and to get the first glimpse to turn left into Ringwood Road is maximum 100metres making it very dangerous entering the Highway off Ringwood Road wether your in a car or truck.
If 262 metres is required why has this not been flagged as a major problem or are we waiting for a major accident or a fatality to occur.
The local traffic can deal with it, bring in BP Solar additional 250-300 extra vehicles and there is going to be a massive problem.

To
Diana Mitchell
Re- Goulburn River Solar Farm Project

We, the Undersigned strongly object to the above Project for the following reasons-

• This Project is clearly not within the Public Interests and also not within the Communities Interests. This Project is inconsistent with Objectives of the NSW Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979.
• National Parks and the Goulburn River are places of immense public interest. They present for the preservation of the national environment -they protect endemic species and places of importance to the regional Aboriginal People.
• That large scale solar and storage rollout is still early days - many of the risks and therefore liabilities associated with life-cycle analysis are yet to be fully assessed -project developers, project owners, consent authorities and local government authorities need to adopt an abundance of ‘precaution’ in exercising approval.

Approval should not be granted for this project as the following key issues will not meet objectives and standards within the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation act 1999, State significant Development, Department of Agriculture, Water and Environment Act.-

• Biodiversity – potential loss or modification of terrestrial habitats due to vegetation clearing with potential for impacts to threatened species and ecological communities in the Project Area.
• Heritage (Aboriginal and Historic)– potential for impacts to Aboriginal and/or historic heritage objects or heritage values within or near the Project Area.
• Amenity – potential for impacts to the surrounding landscape and character of the locality.
• Access – potential for disruption to traffic due to heavy vehicle delivery for project materials and accelerated degradation of roads.
• Land – potential for temporary soil erosion associated with land clearing during construction and runoff from solar modules during operation and potential impacts to agricultural land use.
• Social – potential impacts for social amenity due to land use change, changes in the local population and pressure of local facilities and services and economic benefits associated with local employment and training for staff.
• Economic – potential for financial benefits to the state and local community as well as direct and indirect benefits to local services through the construction and operational phase.
• Water – potential impacts to water resources and water supply for construction and operational purposes, as well as changes to surface water flow as a result of the Project.
• Hazards and risk – potential increased impact of bushfire, dangerous goods, flooding, groundwater contamination, hazardous and offensive development, land contamination, waste and other issues.
• Built environment – potential increase on the use of public land in the surrounding area (notably, the Goulburn River National Park) and increased use of the surrounding public infrastructure.
• Air – potential increase in particulate matter from construction operations and potential increase of atmospheric emissions from the construction phase of the Project.
• Waste – potential increase in landfill as a result of construction activities, as well as decommissioning of solar panels at their end of life.
• Cumulative impacts – potential cumulative impacts of the currently planned, proposed and constructed wind and solar farm projects, as well as existing mines in the vicinity of the Project Area, in relation to traffic and transport, visual amenity, social amenity, land use conflict and economic impacts.

This is a brutal intrusion of industrialization on our doorstep that we do not want, it will have no benefit to our district and community.
A project of this size will have dire consequences for the surrounding landowners and will no doubt cause a downturn in land prices.
The death and destruction of around 2000 hectares of land and its inhabitants adjoining the Goulburn National Park with an ugly sea of 950,000 solar panels only to benefit only 4% of Sydney’s electricity demands does not justify this project.
This project will be almost the equivalent size of the whole Wellington Solar farm project which is an absolute eye sore and has degraded the whole of Wellington.
We brought our land for the peaceful serenity and the abundant wildlife, the conscious choice we made by living in a rural location is to protect and conserve this area for future generations.
Rural people make decisions every day to better their environment, it’s about time the major cities stood up and started embracing solar on every rooftop so they can feel better about offsetting their carbon footprints instead of destroying the beauty of rural lands.

Kym Daniel & Ben Morgan
1801 Wollara Road, Merriwa
Ph- 0409 015 678

I object to the project because it is inappropriate to impact productive rural land with out proper consideration of the net primary production (NPP) which is quoted in terms of Kilograms/ hectare. Australia is a large continent mass - of desert country fringed by productive landscapes which must be nurtured, respected and conserved for their NPP capacity, both as preserving production and capacity to contribute to feeding he world's population.
Our water resources in Australia are scarce and should not be meddled with frivolously in wasteful ways which will also reduce the nation's NPP .
Cumulative impact is significant with these projects and poorly managed, neither fully divulged to the impacted populations nor recognised and understood for the potential social dislocation of communities.
I object to the project because of the 'moral hazard', being the greater risks proposed to be considered in full knowledge that the decision making bodies, charged with the responsibility to approve or reject the proposal , may not ultimately be held accountable. However consideration must now be given to the potential prosecutions of both public servants and politicians in relation to the 'RoboDebt' scenario, noting that assumed immunity from prosecution may no longer be their safety net. Assessors must now factor in the additional risk. The community understand and decline the risk. Local communities reject the proposal because of the long term risk.
Where projects set out to "supposedly save the planet" and destroy the biodiversity, the environment, financial viability and social fibre of the community in the process, is good enough reason to reject the proposal.

After the discovery of threatened species habitat in the location of this submissionthis is another reason i strongly object to this application.Even though the size of this project has been revised and exclusion zones incorporated in the area i fail to see how these measures will protect these threatened species.With all the construction,vehicle movements,machinery,trucks,noise,dust,clearing,road construction and worker movements that will be going on it will have a huge impact on all wildlife,not just at this site but all around the area as well.This once quiet area where farming activities were carried out will be completely transformed,not just during construction but over the entire life of the project.These activities would have to be detrimental to all wildlife including threatened species and i do not understand why such projects are not located in areas such as reclaimed mining land,old mine sites and decommissiond power station sites where the area has been impacted already and minimal further impact would occur.The use of agricultural land surrounded by national park to house this type of project and the impact it will have on the environment and surrounding areas dose not seem right.If we are trying to save the planet by not burning coal and moving to renewables,to locate these solar farms on agricultural land and impact other parts of the environment and animals seems like you are saving one aspect while destroying another.

I object to this project for reasons listed below;

The loss of food producing land of which Australia only has 4% of its total land mass as arable land
The massive economic loss to the local farm related work and business for farm implements shops.
The environmental contamination of land by heavy metals eg lead within the panels
agricultural land it can never be rehabilitated back to safe food producing land.
There is no money deposit guarantee placed in an independent / local government trust account for that the end-of-life rehabilitation cost. No guarantee that this expense may be borne by the owner/lessees at that time protecting the local rate payer.
No detail regarding the recycling of panels, lithium batteries and other failing infrastructure. Where is the waste going to be stored at the end of infrastructure life.
Third world slave labour used to manufacture the panels is not explained or denied
If infrastructure fails / glass panels break, there will be leaking toxic substances into local water ways
Is the proponent company Australian? If not, is a foreign company highly subsidised by the taxpayer for the benefit of off shore entities.
There is no proof that the current system is damaging the environment.
How are the taxpayers going to get back their contribution?

A waste of money and resources. All this stuff is based on the hypothesis that 0.0412% of CO2 in our atmosphere controls Earth's climate. That so many 'scientists' and politicians support this falsity is breathtaking.
What lies will be told, when after all the wasted resources around the world are tallied, there is no change to what the climate does?
I note that this project, like most similar ones in recent years, allow the developers to close down or walk away or go broke without any commitment to restore the land to its original state.
Deny approval!!!

This solar factory is not needed and is destroying prime farmland and taking away food from the Australian community

Recently both the sides or Ringwood/Wollara road have been slashed making this road safer for travel.The local council carry this out only every now and then.Also up at the intersection of the Golden Hwy and Ringwood road both the sides of the road and the banks of the road have been slashed.This has markedly improved the visibility at this intersection.Due to the proposed huge traffic volume increases using both this intersection and above mentioned roads if this application is approved perhaps Bp could in their maintenance program for both above mentioned areas commit to carrying out these slashing/clearing operations on a regular basis.

Re further to my concerns about the road i had a discussion with Stehpen Archer from Bp and he told me that during the construction period Bp would be responsible for the maintenance of the road.In some correspondence from Bp it states they would be responsible for management of the road during construction,not maintenance?Once again we need a firm committment from Bp to honour responsibility for maintenance during construction.Another issue i would like to raise is the increase in noise all these traffic movements will create,especially truck compression braking.Some measures need to be put in place to limit this practice.

I object to all solar farms based on the following criteria:
All solar panels and lithium batteries are toxic and cause permanent contamination by leaching into rural waterways and soil profiles.
Not to mention the humanitarian repression involved to mine and process the minerals in rare earths for the manufacture of the panels and mega-batteries.
A moretorium should be called by the NSW government until such time as an environmentally acceptable waste management plan is leglislated - presently there is no plan.
Ian McDonald, Walcha Grazier.

Re my other submissions about problems with Ringwood/Wollara roads more issues are listed here:The road up from Kellick crossing past the settlement hall up to Neverfail rd is very narrow.This section of road has recently been resealed.The actual road is only about 4mts wide and when passing other vehicles you need to put 2 wheels off the road and onto the gravel verge.With many heavy vehicles proposed to use this road i understand that the minimum width of this road needs to be 8mts?There is nothing mentioned from BP about addressing this problem.Another section of road that was identified as being of concern and discussed at the community meeting with Bp is the section located in front of the property called Roscommon.This section is badly potholed and the surface of the road is breaking up badly.This area has been a problem for some time and recently had some pothole repairs done by the council.Even with the limited traffic movements this road experiences at the moment ,these repairs are now non existent and the road continues to detriorate.I can not imagine how this section would look with predicted truck movements damaging it further.Once again there is no commitment from BP to do anything about this.