This is half-pie.

district plan

Posted 11. June 2004, 23:50 in by Alan Macdougall, received 8 comments.

In the mail this afternoon was a circular from the council giving notice of a couple of changes to the district plan. Normally I wouldn’t bother trying to seek this stuff out, but if it arrives in the mail I’ll give it a read. But there’s something in here I can’t quite figure out.

Here’s part of the description for Proposed Plan Change 32:

The Council aims to take a proactive stance in preparing for likely applications for wind farms in the Wellington City area…

And here’s part of the description for Proposed Plan Change 33:

The Council has further identified important ridgelines and hilltops so that everyone has certainty over where we propose to manage the visual effects of development in those locations.

Does anyone else detect a contradiction here? It seems that at the same time as the Council says it’s encouraging wind farms, it’s putting extra protection around the very spots that would be the best wind farm locations. Weird.

Personally I can’t wait to see wind farms all over Wellington. Pencarrow Head needs a wind farm. The undeveloped ridgeline to the west of our house where the sun goes down every night needs a row of turbines. Wellington has an opportunity to take a greater responsibility for its own energy use, and through this we can hope to avoid building more dams in conveniently distant but unfortunately pretty locations; avoid another CO2 spewing Huntly; avoid going nuclear.

But I suspect I might be in a minority on this one.




Comments

  1. house_monkey
    12 June 2004, 01:31 #

    Well I'm with you anyway.

  2. Patrick Quinn-Graham
    12 June 2004, 02:39 #

    I'm also in agreement. Would make a great photo opportunity at least. I'm also intrigued by anything that can help keep us Nuclear free. Wind power is something that is just waiting to be harnessed, especially in places like Wellington. If only there wasn't a high entry cost (at least I think there is...) to building such power gathering farms. If only there was a way to train monkeys to make the generators out of clay....

  3. Brena
    12 June 2004, 11:37 #

    The concept of collecting energy from nature without harming nature is a path we must follow, it just makes good sense. Burning oil is so primative...

  4. house_monkey
    12 June 2004, 12:59 #

    hehe, monkeys :-)

  5. Sarah
    12 June 2004, 13:03 #

    Me too! I love wind farms! I also don't see the difference between the "visual pollution" of a whacking great hydro-dam and the "visual pollution" of a wind farm. Oh the hypocrisy of the not-in-my-backyarders.

  6. Sam
    12 June 2004, 15:20 #

    A year or so ago there was a Yank come to Palmerston North who had made a bio-electric plant that was powered off, essentially, green waste. It cost about $65 million to build, but would pay for itself in 2-3 years by selling the methane/hydrogen/compost etc that were the beneficial by-products of the process. You'd think, New Zealand being the supposedly "clean and green" nation that we are, would have jumped on it, but for some unknown reason noone did anything about it.

  7. Alan
    13 June 2004, 15:29 #

    We're all in agreement then! Let's start our own pro-wind-farm lobby group then. And for those rare times when it's not windy, we could have trained monkeys cranking the handles to keep the power flowing...

  8. house_monkey
    14 June 2004, 02:29 #

    I'm all in favour of that, especially if it involves monkeys!

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