Rural communities are splintering over plans to build dozens of wind turbines in southern NSW. Landowners opposed to the 132-metre high turbines are devaststed their lifestyles, landscape and land values could be destroyed by neighbours allowing turbines on their farms. At Conroy's Gap, north of Yass, 15 turbines are planned. ..."It's split the community down the middle. "My mother is dead against these things and her brother, my uncle, has been promoting them," Mr McGrath said.

A $50 million wind farm will be built near Victoria's top coastal attractions, despite State Government promises to keep turbines away from the Great Ocean Rd. The Government says the Newfield wind farm, about 12km from the Twelve Apostles in the southwest, will bring jobs to Victoria and boost renewable energy. But residents say it could be the start of a flood of wind turbines near environmentally sensitive coast land. The Acciona Energy wind farm will include 15 turbines that are 110m tall.

The beautiful Puketoi ranges will be turned into an "industrial park" if locals don't put a stop to the proposed Waitahora wind farm, the head of an opposition group says. Last week, Contact Energy announced plans for a $500 million, 177-megawatt wind farm on the remote Puketoi ranges, east of Pahiatua.

Families around Myponga and Sellicks Hill on the Fleurieu Peninsula are fighting the State Government, local council, and an international electricity generator to preserve their region. Yet the power company which residents say is threatening their tranquillity advertises itself as green, friendly and environment-conscious. TrustPower is a New Zealand generator which wants to build a wind farm on the hills behind Mt Terrible and around Heatherdale Hill close to Myponga, on two ridgelines some 8km long.

The energy company is holding an open day at the Waewaepa stockyard from 10am-2pm, to discuss yet another proposed farm - this time in the ranges east of Pahiatua. Many locals, some of whom only found out about the farm in a mailbox leaflet a month ago, were not impressed, Mr Taylor said. "They have put all the glossy brochures out, and all the bull**** and jellybeans or whatever you want to call it. I am not that rapt about it."

In evidence to the Central Otago District Council last year Meridian acknowledged the turbines each of which will have a rotor roughly the size of a Boeing 747 would have an adverse visual impact on the nearby Paerau Valley. But it produced photographic mock-ups suggesting that from other vantage points the mountain block on which they would be arrayed would remain the dominant visual feature. However, Sydney says the windfarm will "industrialise" the landscape for vast distances. "What happens when you put that number of wind turbines of that size in the landscape is that they actually become the landscape. You don't see anything else really."

Wendy Brock says the family have been suffering from both loud noise and low-frequency sound that comes up through the floor of their house, causing weeks on end of sleepless nights. Wellington consultant engineer John Third said wind turbines created a broad and complex spectrum of noise. The problem was beyond the expertise of acoustic engineers, and the health effects were a matter for audiologists, not engineers, he said.

Wellington City Council released the results of the submissions on Meridian's proposed industrial wind installation that is bitterly opposed by almost all of the 100 or so residents of the small community to the west of Wellington. Of about 780 submissions received by the council, 410 were against, 380 for and there were five neutral submissions on the proposed wind farm. ... "The residents of Wellington are not silly and are waking up to the real effects of industrial wind turbines too close to homes, and the potential for more to follow. Questions are also being asked about whether these huge investments are actually as economic or as green as they are made out to be to the general public."

Residents surrounding the proposed Lal Lal Windfarm have aired more concerns over the plan. Some residents believe they have no guarantee how the proposal will affect them, the visual amenity and farming. WestWind-Energy lodged its planning application with the planning minister last month for a 64-turbine wind farm, split into two sections, north of Elaine and east of Yendon. Millbrook resident Michael Phyland is making a submission to the proposal, with his property only 700m from the nearest proposed turbine. ..."We're concerned to have so many turbines so close to home, and about the amount of noise - we've no idea how it's going to affect us," Mr Phyland said.

An Ashhurst family have been asked to record noise from wind turbines they say are making life a misery. The Brock family, who have complained about loud noise and low-frequency sound from Meridian Energy's Te Apiti wind farm since 2004, say Meridian has now sent them a recorder and microphone to use on days the turbines are especially noisy. Wendy Brock said the recorder would catch the roar of the turbines during strong easterlies, but would not register the low-frequency sound that sometimes wrecked her family's sleep for weeks on end.

A spokesman for the residents' group, Peter Russell-Clarke, says the wind farms are inefficient and will ruin the landscape. He says tourism will also be affected. "A lot of the people in the McHarg range area were putting up B&Bs well those that started have now stopped and those that we're going to apply are now not going to apply," he said.

Concrete has now been poured on 26 of 62 turbine foundations, scattered across the 55-square-kilometre site of Meridian Energy's West Wind project on Wellington's southwest coast. Each of the pads is 15 metres across and 1.5 metres deep, containing 48 tonnes of reinforced steel and 370 cubic metres of concrete. The pads will hold the turbines in place as the area's formidable winds whip against them.

Mayor Steve Toms said the biggest issue the DCP set guidelines for was the setback distance for unrelated houses from turbines. "The two kilometres setback was a benchmark set up by other councils but certainly takes into account noise and aesthetic studies," he said. "Obviously there are rules in place but there is a certain amount of controversy with how noise affects residents. "The scale of these towers is rather higher than normal at 125 to 130 metres but we felt 2km to be a reasonable benchmark."

Media baron and former All Blacks captain David Kirk has paid for a full-page advertisement in one of his own newspapers backing high-profile critics of a massive Central Otago windfarm. The advertisement in the Escape section of today's Sunday Star-Times headlined "100% Vandalism," features a defaced version of a landscape painting by artist and windfarm critic Grahame Sydney. Kirk, who heads Fairfax Australia, which owns a stable of papers in New Zealand, told the Star-Times he was happy to be publicly associated with the campaign against state-owned Meridian Energy's $1.5 billion windfarm proposal. "I personally paid for the ad. It's a personal contribution," he said. ...The Environment Court is considering appeals against Project Hayes.

On week two of the hearing in Cromwell, Wellington law firm Morrison Kent, representing the group, opened its submission claiming that Meridian was failing in its duty to protect and preserve the landscape. Counsel Ian Gordon said the effects of Project Hayes were significant and adverse and the gaps in evidence made the effects even more adverse than present assessment allowed. The wind farm site is surrounded by areas already protected for their natural and/or landscape values.

The Glen Innes Severn council has officially adopted a new policy governing the development of wind farms. ..."The critical issue that received wide support from the community is a recommended two kilometre buffer distance from non-related dwellings,' he said. "So those properties than don't have a turbine or wind farm on them ... council's asking for those applicants to understand that's the distance we'd be requiring."

The Resource Management Act states clearly in section six of ‘purposes and principles' that matters of national importance include the protection of historic heritage and outstanding natural features and landscapes from ‘inappropriate subdivision, use and development'. Both the consent authority's commissioned Landscape Architect Ben Espie and Planner David Whitney thought so, suggesting formally that Project Hayes should be declined. Barrister John Matthews, who chaired the Hearing panel and issued a dissenting decision recommending that Hayes be turned down, thought so too. Yet the All-of-Government submissions in support of Hayes evidently held sway, for Project Hayes was given consent in November 2007, with the decision ‘owned' by Central Otago District Council.

The region of Otago is in a state of significant upheaval over the giant turbines of Meridian's Project Hayes and TrustPower's Mahinerangi Wind Farm. Both wind farms have been given interim consent. Both decisions are being appealed in court by a variety of NGO groups ... a combined 276 turbines and 190 kilometres of twelve-metre-wide roading, Project Hayes and Mahinerangi Wind Farm stand to be the most visible industrial sites in New Zealand. Both wind farms will intrude on cherished, officially designated ‘outstanding landscapes', and annihilate nationally significant historic features such as the Old Dunstan Road.

Details of any planned compensation for landowners whose property values may fall because of a proposal to establish a wind farm near Gore will remain secret after a ruling from the panel hearing the application. TrustPower, which wants to build a large wind farm at Kaiwera Downs, southwest of Gore, had sent affected landowners a letter last December which responded to concerns about the negative impact the development would have on their property values.

TrustPower was yesterday accused of trying to bribe Kaiwera residents opposed to its multi million-dollar wind farm. Residents did not hold back as they voiced their opposition to the project and criticism of the way the company has treated them. Allan Woodrow, who farms next to the wind farm site, said the first he learned about the proposal was at a public meeting. At the meeting a former senior TrustPower employee "told me, if I don't like it, sell up and move on", Mr Woodrow said. ...Leanne Heaps, who would see 29 turbines and 10 blade tips from her home, said TrustPower had failed to offer any real compensation. "(It had) only made some very insulting and miserable offers, always with the bribe that you would have to remove your objection." If the wind farm was for the good of the nation then why was it at the bottom of the South Island and not where the majority of the nation lived, Mrs Heaps said.