A city of propeller heads, and why?
Because the wind farm contracts with Mighty River Power are for a staggering 60 years.
Click here for the sabotaged
interview with MRP CEO Doug Heffernan.Whoa !!The Council pours spray onto Brown's flat, the sump of the city's water supply, to satisfy their partner Mighty River Power. Quote from a PNCC letter to a very concerned resident - 6/4/09."Through this maintenance, the road and water tables to the side of the road have been sprayed, and the road itself has been metalled and shaped."///////////////////////Peter Wheeler, Councillor sums up MRP's appalling conduct in the 5th comment below this post
"NEW DEVELOPMENTS."
A PRELIMINARY SUMMARY OF SUBMISSIONS , WHICH YOU CAN COMMENT ON BY 9TH APRIL.
Contact’s Dannevirke wind farm plans shot down.
See the first comment below for details of the Waitahora decision.
Yet another wind farm defeated 2/4/09.
MT CASS WIND FARM
See the second comment below for details lauding this important environmental victory.
Editorial from the Manawatu Standard 3/4/09 pouring scorn on the scandalous treatment the city is getting from MRP and the Government over the Call-In.
See the third comment for the full text of this editorial.
The city loses whatever happens.
Wind farm guidelines put on hold 7/4/09
Up to $150,000 of ratepayers' money will be spent developing a policy for wind farm development in Palmerston North.
But the policy won't be finalised until a board of inquiry rules on Mighty River Power's (MRP) proposed Turitea Wind Farm.
But the policy won't be finalised until a board of inquiry rules on Mighty River Power's (MRP) proposed Turitea Wind Farm.
See the fourth comment below for this story. Is this PNCC's last joke at the expense of the city?
New Board members - 7/4/09. Do they know they know the "culture" of MRP ?
"Joan Withers, who is stepping down as Fairfax New Zealand CEO in June and was formerly a Meridian Energy director, is joining the Mighty River power board. Her appointment is subject to due diligence. The Warehouse chairman Keith Smith is also joining the Mighty River board"
Reading through the lines - see the story below.
Wind farm to bring $500m to Manawatu ( plus commentary in blue )By GRANT MILLER - The Manawatu Standard
Last updated 13:00 19/03/2009
About $500 million will be blown into the Manawatu economy if the Turitea Wind Farm is built, according to project leader Mighty River Power.
Construction alone would create 250 jobs and be worth between $150m and $180m over two years, a supportive business audience was told yesterday. Wow, so the conservative $150 million or thereabouts which is wiped off the value of property on the Summerhill side of the river will be made up for ....... by paying construction workers....... while the multiplier effect of devaluation will be felt right across the city. Note, a survey of Manawatu businesses by The Manawatu Chamber of Commerce and reported on in the Manawatu Standard 3/3/09 showed only 6% support for the wind farm. Of the 523 members less than 30 responded in favour of the wind farm.
The state-owned power generator began a public relations offensive at a Manawatu Chamber of Commerce breakfast in Palmerston North yesterday ahead of a government board of inquiry hearing on whether the 122-turbine proposal should be allowed to proceed.
Chamber chairman Lance Morrison said he believed the project had "silent majority" public support. Just who is Lance Morrison ? Hitler and Napoleon claimed they had majority support when they invaded Russia, and look at what happened. 80% of submitters are opposed to the wind farm.
Mighty River Power project development manager Stuart McDonnell said the $500m figure came from using a conservative economic multiplier of 2.8, so that indirect benefits such as spending on motels were included. So, pray tell, what is the multiplier effect of Massey University and International Pacific College, the city's biggest businesses, which are right under the turbines? Were they ever asked ? No, of course not. Did anyone ever consider the negative financial impact on them and the " multiplier effect " on the whole city? Will students really want to study in "Propeller City ?" Massey has already had to diversify to other regions in order to survive. If governments are so good at creating jobs and picking winning technologies, why doesn’t the Soviet Union still exist? See http://www.wind-watch.org/news/2009/04/07/are-green-jobs-an-economic-black-hole/
After construction, there would be about $4m of ongoing benefits for the region, with 10 to 15 people employed for tasks including repairs and maintenance, he said. That $4 million is mostly going to wind farmers on private land who will pack their bags and leave the city. 80% of the cost of the wind farm with turbines and other associated equipment will go offshore, increase the country's alarming debt burden ( New Zealand debt is second to that of bankrupt Iceland ) and help to lower the country's credit rating. A 122-turbine farm in the Turitea Reserve and neighbouring properties, 10 kilometres southeast of Palmerston North's Square, would power about 150,000 homes, he said. Why does Mighty River Power persist with this nonsense. 150,000 houses can only be supplied when the wind is blowing at optimum speed and when the turbines are not lying broken and mangled over the landscape.
Wind energy helped offset the company's hydro-electricity operations. National electricity usage has fallen off a cliff, it has dropped by a whopping 12%. (Molly Melhuish, an energy analyst for the Domestic Energy Users Network in the Dominion Post, 14/03/2009) Please explain how houses are supplied with electricity when the wind doesn't blow? - during winter months when the hydro lakes are low the three Manawatu wind farms have been operating at less than 1% of their installed capacity during peak demand ( a 5 hour period during the evening ).Transpower has revealed this startling information.
The main argument against the project was the visual effect of it, Mr McDonnell said. Er, no, there are as many arguments against as there are turbines. This is a shabby and arrogant dismissal of submitters' legitimate concerns.
Of 655 submissions received by the Ministry of Environment, 66 per cent were opposed and 20 per cent in support. In actual fact the deliberately confusing questionnaire made it easy for many opposing submissions to be classified as " mixed" when they were definitely against. 80% are opposed. 45 additional submissions have since been allowed and only 2 were in favour.
Mighty River Power's "broad evidence" would be that the cumulative visual effect from adding more turbines in the vicinity of others was negligible. By "broad" he actually means 122 turbines smothering 14kms of the remaining unblemished skyline behind and within the city. Those responsible for this disaster will continue to fly in and out again. They don't give a toss about Palmerston North or the amenity values enjoyed by its citizens.
Power would be supplied to the national grid. It wasn't technically possible to inject power into the local grid and there would be no local discount on power prices, he said. Nothing here for you, ratepayers, move along. Incredibly there were submitters in favour who actually believe that rates will be lowered by the income from this wind farm. Many other supporters are wind farmers and their families who stand to benefit from revenue from turbines and transmission lines. The wind farm fraternity in the South Island chimed in too with a slew of shallow submissions. Blackley Construction project manager Grant Binns, who hoped to secure wind farm-related work, told the meeting fears about a negative effect on property values were over-hyped. Yeah, right a 20% decline, if you can sell, is "over hyped" It's easy to spot those with their snouts in the trough.
One of the company's contract managers had sold his Summerhill house within a week. Really, did he tell the luckless buyer about the wind farm, I'll bet not!
Asked about "negative" press coverage, Mr McDonnell said Mighty River Power had previously created an information vacuum through lack of communication. Oops , yes we are arrogant and deliberately kept the public in the dark until after submissions closed, but from now on we'll be good boys.
The company planned to be more forward in the coming weeks. In time to look good in front of the members of the Board of Enquiry, of course, however, the board of 5 are intelligent people who won't be taken for a ride.
A royalty to Turitea Reserve owner Palmerston North City Council must, by law, be spent on reserves and the city council planned an eco-park. The mythical Eco Park will be out of bounds to the public and beyond scrutiny. The Council sold the city for this?
A date for the hearing is expected to be confirmed this week.
A red flag is waving over the 133
submissions in favour. A huge percentage are highly dubious and are subverting
the submission process, same handwriting, same comments, same ticks and posted on the same
day. Lawyers are looking at them now. Our advice to the perpetrators is that it
would be in their interests to withdraw their submissions A.S.A.P .We will keep
you posted.
................................................................
OK here are the facts.
Submissions 198 - 215 are, all bar one, from Christchurch. 14 are in the same handwriting identical to Daniel Poff's submission, number 204, while 4 others are different but say similar things. None wish to speak to their submission. (Hardly surprising don't you think!)
Submissions 404 - 449 also look like the Poff family's work as well. Three are from Waiouru and incredibly one from the Shell Service Station in Waiouru states a non belief in the use of fossil fuels. See submissions 416, 428, 429.
Really, did these people think that they would actually get away with this? This leaves a grand total of 63 submissions in serious doubt, meaning almost 50% of the supporting submissions need to be discarded leaving only about 10% of all submissions in favour.
Submission 167 endorses a good old fascist approach to problem solving. "Anyone who opposes deserves to have their power cut off." The level of malice in the wind farm camp towards wind farm victims simply takes your breath away.
-----------------------------------------------------
Will the RMA protect residents from noise or environmental degradation ?
Er, nope, the law protects Mighty River Power.
The Ministry for the Environment 2001/ 2002 survey of local authorities asked councils questions about their use of infringement notices. The disadvantages are listed as follows:
- Infringement notices cannot be used to enforce technical conditions of consents and to provide for this an amendment would be needed to the Act and the regulations.
- The process does not allow for recovery of monitoring and other costs. This can dissuade councils from using infringement procedures where monitoring costs exceed the infringement fee.
- The procedure is expensive if the notice is challenged.If the infringement procedure is not followed exactly or there is a defect in the notice, then the action cannot be pursued
