DIVISION 1 councillors last week spoke with residents worried by proposals for industrial solar and battery storage systems at Lower Mount Walker.
Say No to Lower Mount Walker Industrial Social and Bremer Batteries group hosted the meeting at the Rosewood Memorial Hall along with Let’s Rethink Renewables Chairman Jim Willmott.
Crs Pye Augustine and Jacob Madsen joined 120 residents who were there to learn more about plans for industrial solar on productive agricultural land in rural Ipswich.
Proposals in the area currently include a Battery Electorate Storage System in 500 shipping-like containers at Blanch Farm and another proposal for industrial solar at Ebenezer.
“I think we’re moving so fast that we don’t have time to be able to understand it [renewables rollout] properly,” Cr Augustine said after the meeting.
“People are not anti-renewables; they just want to breathe before we make decisions.”
Cr Madsen said new energy capacity was required, and the most suitable locations were needed.
“Obviously [we could choose] already contaminated land or land that has been destroyed by industry previously – that’s great – but we’re operating on a really large scale,” he said.
“Unfortunately, it’s not my area of expertise, but I think most people would agree that non-productive land is a better area for it, but sometimes those areas are non-productive for reasons, like they’re not near anything.”
Mr Willmott said the industrialisation of rural and regional landscape had only just begun.
“We’ve only seen the very start of it,” Mr Willmott said.
“We’re going to have a mass industrialisation of the eastern seaboard of Australia with renewable developments.”
Mr Willmott said koalas had already been killed on renewables projects up and down the country.
• The Clarke Creek Wind Farm at Rockhampton made headlines last year when the building of 194 wind turbines on 1,513 hectares of suitable koala habitat showed euthanasia would be used on animals injured during the project.
“Euthanasia will be conducted using blunt force trauma,” the plan’s biodiversity plan stated.
“This is a hard, sharp blow to the base of the back of the skull with a blunt metal or heavy wooden bar,” the plan stated.
