The Mortlake south wind farm will be built using a noise standard that is more than a decade old.
It will be built by Acciona who run the Waubra wind factory.
Not trusting Acciona, five families including mine recently commissioned our own noise monitoring by an independent organisation (at our own great expense) to be conducted at the same time as Acciona conducted theirs.
Once completed, we were hoping to compare data.
As expected, we were right to have no faith in their transparency or honesty.
We were told their equipment had failed and they had no data to show.
Their equipment and subsequent data is monitored in their Melbourne office.
I do not believe Acciona would assemble five sets of expensive equipment and not check to see if it was working over the entire two weeks of testing.
We asked for some proof of the failure but they would not give us any.
When asked by a journalist from The Standard newspaper if they had prior knowledge of our background noise testing they said ‘no’.
Funnily enough, Peter Allen and I have copies of emails sent to David Clarke of Acciona telling him of our intentions to conduct independent noise testing well before any testing was done.
Not only that, I have a copy of David Clarke’s response to my email!
Acciona will do anything it can to get this wind factory up.
It is canvassing local farmers who may be interested in allowing transmission power lines to be erected on their properties.
I implore any farmer who is approached by Acciona to immediately take that contract to their lawyer.
I think you will be horrified at what you could be letting yourself in for.
Shelley McDonald, Framlingham Road, Mortlake
