Barton, N. Review into Wellington Gas Fired Power Station

WELLINGTON NSW 2820
29 June 2016

Dear All,

RE: REVIEW INTO WELLINGTON GAS FIRED POWER STATION

During the NSW State Election campaign Troy Grant MP as Member for Dubbo backed Wellington Mayor, Rod Buhr’s call for an urgent review into the approval of the Wellington Gas Fired Power Station at the nominated site. See http://www.wellingtontimes.com.au/story/2962222/mayor-calls-for-urgent-review-into-gas-fired-power-station/. A Petition signed by over 1389 Wellington residents was handed to Troy Grant by Councillor Pip Smith and Martin Sannikka calling for the approval to be rescinded and in August 2015 ERM Power withdrew their application to modify the project approval and surrendered the application.

Unfortunately, this is not the end of the story. Whilst the application was surrendered the original approval still stands and is open for any other proponent to re-activate the project at this site as correctly stated in the Wellington Times on 8 June 2016.

The Local Member and Deputy Premier, Troy Grant refused to support an order for a promised Review and back the community and hides behind the unsupported myth of legal ramifications and abandonment of the Project. The Minister for Planning has elected not to rescind the Project Approval at this site and is unwilling to order a Review into the planning process where there is no procedural fairness.

The reason for the review was to stop the same people from making the same mistakes over and over again. The bureaucrats from the Department of Planning and the EPA are not accountable and nobody in Government cares about the property rights or damages caused. Why does the Government refuse to remove the bureaucrats who are responsible – the repeat failures?

It would appear that this is not an isolated incidence of failure by the Planning Department and the EPA. The Bodangora Wind Farm was approved by the PAC and supported by the EPA despite demonstrable errors in transformer noise emissions. Pat Murphy’s battle with Whitehaven Coal is largely due to a bureaucratic oversight that places no pollution standards in the Project Approval and therefore no legal reason for his property to be acquired. The devastating impact of the Uranquinty Gas Fired Power Station due to inadequate and false noise modelling is yet another example.

It would appear that both sides of politics condone lying and reverse engineering and are not prepared to face up to and do something about government bureaucrats not rigorously assessing applications and stealing private property rights on a massive and regular scale and offering no compensation.

It is becoming far too common for politicians to make promises prior to an election and then after the election breaking them.