The Marlborough Environment Centre has decided against appealing the resource consent granted for a Ward wind farm to the Environment Court, after agreement was reached to reduce the turbine size to two-thirds of its initial height. ..."So our point of view is we will have less landscape effects," Mr Browning said, though he still had concerns over the visual impact of turbines in general.

The Marlborough Environment Centre has decided against appealing the resource consent granted for a Ward wind farm to the Environment Court, after agreement was reached to reduce the turbine size to two-thirds of its initial height.

Farmers Carole and Nick Webby were granted resource consent two weeks ago by the Marlborough District Council to erect up to three 75-metre-high wind turbines on a ridge of Centre Hill on their Weld Cone farm, three kilometres southeast of Ward.

The wind farm will be a partnership between the Webbys and wind power company Energy3, of which Awatere Valley vineyard owner Warren McNabb is a director.

The Environment Centre had opposed the resource consent application on the basis of visual impact and concerns that future wind-farm developments would run ahead of public discussion around the issue of man-made industrial features on the landscape.

Under the resource consent process, the Environment Centre had 15 working days from the notification day to decide whether to appeal.

Marlborough Environment Centre representative Steffan Browning said an agreement had been reached with Mr McNabb to reduce the height of the turbines to a maximum of 47m, down from 75m in the original application.

"So our point of view is we will have less landscape effects," Mr Browning said, though he still had concerns over the visual impact of turbines in general.

Mr Browning said the centre liked the positive parts of the project, such as the small scale of the wind farm, its local ownership and the fact that power would be entering the grid locally, and wished the project all the best.

Mr McNabb said he was "pretty pleased" at Mr Browning's decision and said the smaller turbines "made sense for the project".

He said while Mr Browning had a valid point, the turbines were not "posing a high landscape issue".

Transporting larger turbines to the site would require major changes to the Webbys' road, and there was a limit to how much power could be injected into the Marlborough Lines' Ward substation, he said.

They also wanted to avoid an appeal by the Environment Centre.

However, it made sense to apply for consent for larger turbines to cover all eventualities. All going to plan, the turbines will be shipped to New Zealand in September, with the aim to have the turbines operating by January 2010.