TRANSMISSION Company Victoria’s release of its preferred easement for the controversial VNI West renewable energy transmission line has been branded a shemozle by one farmer.
Powlett’s Leigh Parry and wife Helen whose family owns irrigation property near Boort say they had mixed messages from TCV in the weeks up to last Wednesday’s announcement.
“On October 10 were told our property was in the easement, on October 15 we were told it wasn’t and then on October 23 we received a map showing eight towers on the property,” Leigh said.
“These letters have been contradictory and we still don’t really know what’s happening.”
“We have tried to get answers without success.”
According to Mr Parry, the line will run within 300 metres of a house on the property.
TCV said its process “to refine the initial 50km wide area of interest to a 2km draft corridor and now a 70-metre preferred easement has been shaped by 18 months of consultation with communities and individual landholders, along with field studies and technical and engineering assessments”.
VNI West program director Tony Hedley said: “Contacting landholders over the past few weeks has been our priority. We’ve spoken with more than 180 landholders within the preferred easement and already had more than 30 follow-up meetings to answer questions on topics such as compensation, land valuation, land access, options to minimise impacts to individual farms, and to discuss the next steps.”
However farmer Barry Batters, an opponent of the project, says most landowners continued to refuse to put their signature to land access agreements.
According to TCV, its confirmed easement considered feedback including:
Landholders around Charlton, Glenloth East, Tragowel and Kerang providing information on areas of flooding in the 2022 floods which did not appear on public databases and maps.
Landholder advice on a property in the North Central section of the easement housing habitat for an endangered species population.
Concerns about the potential health effects of Electro Magnetic Fields (EMF) expressed by residents throughout the region which helped inform adoption of a 300-metre buffer from all residences to alleviate this concern.
Areas such as Glenloth East and Murrabit West where likely expansion of intensive irrigation activity may occur.
TCV says the easement will “avoid where practicable” impacts to cropping and other farm activities, such as the operation of existing lateral move irrigators There are two locations at Tragowel and Meering West where further environmental, social and planning studies are required to better inform the selection of a single preferred easement.