Farmers offered financial windfall | Country News

At a community meeting in Nanneella on Monday 1 July, energy company Fera Australia outlined its proposal to install up to 25 turbines near Nanneella and another 25 south-west of Rushworth.

The half-billion-dollar proposal was met with skepticism by many at the meeting, with a few expressing outright opposition.

Fera Australia director Andrew Lawson said there were two types of agreements open to landowners hosting the wind turbines.

A lease would bring in about $30,000 to $40,000 per turbine per year for the landowner, depending on the wind, electricity produced and other factors.

“To install a transmission line on your property, there is an annual payment of $10,000 per kilometre, which is made every year, and it is indexed,” Lawson said.

“We also pay if there is a decline in the value of your property by doing an assessment before there is any infrastructure and then assessing what would happen if the infrastructure was there and we pay at construction a 150% markup on that, so we try to make sure it is a generous deal for people.

“If you live nearby, but you don’t have the infrastructure on your site, up to three kilometres away, you get a $15,000 payment… and then between one and two thousand dollars of subsidised energy each year if you live within five kilometres of the infrastructure.”

Fera Australia would also offer to contribute to community development projects in the surrounding area.

The district has been abuzz with activity since company representatives visited the district and set up a mobile data collection trailer.

Some expressed surprise that there was enough wind to operate the turbines, but Fera representatives said they would collect more data in the future.

Victorian Nationals leader and Murray Plains MP Peter Walsh said he believed there must be better locations in Victoria and Australia for a wind farm of this size than in such a densely populated major irrigation district.

Mr. Walsh said that while no one doubts the long-term need for renewable energy sources in the overall mix to keep the state’s lights on and businesses and factories running, at this point a more thoughtful approach is needed to where those facilities are located.

“I would have thought that the number of people who attended the Nanneella meeting this week, and the suggestions they put forward, would have confirmed that this site was perhaps not the ideal location for such a project,” he said.