2023 Year in Review and Welcome to our new website

SRRCG

Dec 21, 20233 min read

Updated: Jun 4, 2024

As 2023 draws to a close, SRRCG Committee would like to share its activities and achievements for the year. While Fera continues to provide scant information to the impacted community, the SRRCG has been working hard in the background and we would like to provide reassurance that Fera’s project is certainly not a fait accompli. As the Community Survey results and the map show, there is

widespread community opposition.

While that alone will not be enough to stop the project, Fera needs to find a route through private land for the transmission line connecting the wind turbines with the main Melbourne – Sydney power line. The map shows that this continues to be challenging for them.

It is also important to note that the project is still in its very early, investigative stages. Fera can only submit for planning approvals after they have conducted a range of studies and impact assessments. Biodiversity impact assessments alone should run for 2 years and have not yet commenced.

The SRRCG committee has been putting in many hours behind the scenes and would like to share our achievements for the year:

Increasing community awareness and trying to fill FERA’S information gaps

Created a new logo and migrated the old website to a new site with greatly increased use of visual images. Additional content including more detail on the impacts associated with the proposed wind energy facility is being prepared and will be added over time. Visit www.srrcg.com.
Attended 6 FERA community meetings and tried to hold them accountable by requesting written confirmation of verbal commitments made at these meetings - to date Andrew Lawson has refused to confirm any of these
Ran 3 community meetings at Ruffy, Highlands and Molesworth to increase awareness across the whole potential wind farm and transmission line area
Conducted a community survey with 201 respondents and published the results widely in media shared with local politicians and at community meetings
Had several articles published in Australian Financial Review, Euroa Gazette, Yea Chronicle, Alexandra Standard, Seymour Telegraph, North Central News and Granite News
Established a SRRCG Facebook page.
Letterbox dropped hundreds of flyers with information about FERA’s proposed development
Grew our distribution list to 275 people and sent out several emails updating the community with any information we have been able to obtain from Fera.

Engagement with agencies involved in policy and approvals

Made submission to the Australian Energy Infrastructure Commissioner’s enquiry into community engagement by renewable energy developers, and attended a round table discussion to provide input
Made submissions to VicGrid to inform future locations of renewable energy zones and infrastructure
Engaged with local state and federal politicians - Cindy McLeish, Annabelle Cleeland and Helen Haines - all of whom are sympathetic with the poor community engagement by FERA
Wrote to Shire Councillors
Met and had conversations with key people in Department Energy, Environment and Climate Action and Dept Transport and Planning and the GBCMA to outline our concerns and obtain information about the approvals process.
Met with an Elder and Cultural Heritage Manager to work with the Taungurung to identify cultural heritage sites
Organised community support for a significant landscape overlay (SLO) for the Shire of Mitchell covering parts of the Hughes Creek and Kobyboyn valleys.

Documenting biodiversity

Attended a meeting with FERA, Biosis (ecological consultancy commissioned by FERA) and local environment groups in September. An outcome of this meeting was that Fera/Biosis agreed to establish a Biodiversity Technical Reference Group to ensure that community representatives can provide input into the ecological survey design. This has not yet occurred despite several follow up contacts with Fera.

Uploaded over 280 observations of threatened or of statewide significance fauna species manually from iNaturalist to the Victorian Biodiversity Atlas. This will ensure ready access for Biosis as part for their ecology survey work. We will upload flora species next. Many hundred other species observations have been documented in iNaturalist by keen citizen scientists across our region.

We are planning another community meeting in the new year, probably mid February (date and venue to come). In this meeting, we want to focus on biodiversity findings in our region with Bert Lobert presenting results of his surveys, including sightings of some Southern Greater Gliders and we will also present data captured by our citizen scientists into iNaturalist. We will also do a run through of our new website and provide any updates about Fera’s project if we hear anything new.