The Moyne Shire issued a planning permit for the Salt Creek Wind Farm in June 2007. The planning permit allows for the construction of a wind farm of up to 29.9MW (up to 15 wind turbines) on the Salt Creek Merino Stud at Woorndoo (near Mortlake) in the western district in Victoria, Australia. The site for this project is located enitrely within Moyne Shire and is approximately 30 km east of our Morton's Lane Wind Farm site.

Click here to view the Location Diagram for the Salt Creek & Morton's Lane wind farm sites (15 kb).

The Planning Permit is an important milestone in the development of the Salt Creek Wind Farm. However, a lot more work remains to be done before any construction on the site could commence. We do not expect to be ready to commence construction before September 2008. At this stage we expect to construct the Salt Creek Wind Farm concurrently with the Morton's Lane Wind Farm.

The Planning Permit has many conditions that need to be satisfied before construction of the wind farm can commence. The main requirement is for the preparation and endorsement of an Environmental Management Plan (EMP) for the project. The EMP includes numerous sub-plans that will address specific issues but overall the EMP will guide us in how we should design, construct, operate, maintain and eventually decommission the wind farm. It is a "living document" that will respond to the ever changing environment in which we operate and to the continual advances in best practice.

In the meantime the temporary, 60 m high, meteorological monitoring mast that was installed in April 2004 to assess the wind resource on the site, will continue to operate until the wind farm is constructed. This will allow us to collect as much information about the wind resource on our site as possible. The planning permit for the wind farm allows for a further two meteorological masts to be installed on the site. These new masts (if constructed) will be permanent masts and built to hub height (up to 103 m above ground). We will ensure that there is sufficient overlap of operation to allow for a good corelation between the existing, temporary, 60m high mast and the new, permanent, hub height masts.

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The Salt Creek Merino Stud is a large property of over 2,000 ha just south-west of Woorndoo and for the last century it has been owned and operated by the Coy family. While the Salt Creek Merino Stud is a very large property, the project site was restricted to the narrow ridge on the eastern edge of the property. This ridge is approximately 40 m higher in elevation than the surrounding area and has very few trees and so is exposed to the wind.

Wind monitoring commenced at the Salt Creek Wind Farm site in April 2004 when a temporary, 60 m high, meteorological monitoring mast was installed on the site. The wind is clearly not as strong as it is along the Victorian coast. Analysis of the data collected indicates that by using taller towers to reach stronger winds a commerically viable wind farm is possible at the site.

Specialist studies of the Site commenced in late 2004 (e.g. studies of the flora and fauna species found on and around the site). These studies continued into 2006 as the wind farm proposal was developed and a planning permit application was prepared.

In late 2005 NewEn Australia submitted a Notification of Proposal and sought a determination from the Victorian Minister for Planning under the Planning and Envrionment Act as to the development approval process to be followed for this proposal. In early 2006 the Minister for Planning determined that an Environment Effects Statement was not required and that Moyne Shire would be the Responsible Authority for any planning permit application made for the proposal.

NewEn Australia endeavoured to contact all residences within 10 km of the Site boundary to inform them of our proposal and to periodically update them of our progress. Copies of our correspondence to the community is available here. Any resident, landholder or business in the area who has not received our mailings is encourage to contact our Victorian Projects Office or use our on-line form.

In April 2006 NewEn commenced informal door-to-door visits to all residences within 3 km of the Site boundary. We were seeking to inform the local community around the Site of our proposal. We conducted these door-to door interviews to discuss our proposal with local residents, to hear their views and to address any issues of specific concern that may be raised. An Indicative Layout was presented at each interview (along with copies of the AusWEA Fact Sheet series) to provide local residents with a starting point for discussions. This Indicative Layout was for use as an aid only.

The information gathered from these door-to-door interviews was, along with the findings of our specialist studies, fed back into our design development process and allowed us to prepare our Proposed Layout.

Our Proposed Layout formed a key part of our town planning permit application that we lodged with Moyne and Southern Grampians Shires in October 2006. We presented the Planning Reports and Proposed Layout to the community at an information session held in January 2007.

The planning permit application documents are available on this web site (Click here). Once the appllication was lodged with the Shire, a formal consultation process was undertaken by the Shire before it made its dedetermination on whether to issue a planning permit or not and what conditions they may wish to impose on the planning permit.

The planning permit aplication for our Morton's Lane Wind Farm was also considered at the same time in a joint process conducted on behalf of both Moyne Shire and Southern Grampians Shire.

The Moyne Shire determined by a unanimous decision at its full council meeting on 8 May 2007 to issue a planning permit with 47 conditions. A "notice of decision to grant a permit" was then issued. No appeal against the Shire's decision was lodged and so a formal planning permit was issued by Moyne Shire on 8 June 2007.

A copy of the planning permit is available on this web site (Click here).

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