Landowners hit the road to stop power line

HUNDREDS of regional Victorians opposing AusNet’s proposed Western Victoria Transmission Network Project line between Bulgana and Sydenham held a protest in Miners Rest last Sunday.

Farmers, landowners and residents impacted by the planned 190-kilometre high-voltage line met at the Miners Rest Public Park to participate in a rally organised by members of Stop AusNet including the Moorabool Central Highlands Power Alliance.

Tooting and flashing their lights, drivers of tractors, prime movers, trucks, farm utes, and cars paraded the streets by, and around, the Miners Rest Community Hall where AusNet representatives were conducting a public consultation meeting.

Cate Lancashire was one of the event organisers who has family living in Springbank, where a section of the line is set to pass through.

“We just wanted to communicate to AusNet that we would really like to have a big community consultation where they deliver one narrative to the whole community,” she said.

“We also want to outline to the community that whilst we’re pro renewables, we certainly believe there’s a much better and a much more practical way of delivering this project to Melbourne; undergrounding the lines.

“We’ve got really good representation here today of people across the project line. We would really love AusNet to take our concerns on board and be open to meeting with us as a community group.”

Ms Lancashire said the protest was also an opportunity to highlight the health and wellbeing impacts of the proposed project on those living and working along the line.

“Since the inception of this project, we’ve had people who have had really high stress and anxiety levels, they’re not sleeping, and there’s a ripple affect back to their families, and how they operate their businesses.

“We’re making people aware that they’re not on their own, there is a big group of us, and that they can reach out to us for support,” she said.

Members of Stop AusNet believe the overhead lines are outdated technology that could fall in extreme weather, cause bushfires on their properties, reduce or eliminate the usability of their land, and destroy the habitat of native life.

Late last month, Western Victoria Transmission Network Project director Stephanie McGregor said the route of the line had been drawn over the last year-and-a-half, influenced by surveying, investigation, and community consultation.

She said it has been designed to have the least amount of impact on significant Indigenous sites, native plants, and farmland, to run as far away from dwellings as possible, and that it would be parallel to pre-existing transmission lines.

“Determining this proposed route is a positive step toward unlocking more clean, renewable energy as the state moves to sustainable green power in coming years,” she said.