Windfarms – will it take a death before action?

The current fragmented efforts by the wind industry to notify pilots of the existence of these towers is crippled by the lack of a national database – available to all low-level aviators – that is updated and available in real time. If it were not for the efforts of AAAA and other associations to notify their members when they are advised of a new tower, there would be no timely advice going out to pilots at all.

This is simply not acceptable from operational planning, risk management, windfarm developer duty of care, or national aviation safety regulation perspectives.

That CASA does not have a head of power to deal directly with this issue is an indictment of the lack of a coherent Commonwealth and State government policy on this issue. The withdrawn CASA advisory circular on marking of towers was clearly inadequate, and similar requirements in the US have been met by the wind industry constructing towers that are two feet shorter than the mandatory marking threshold of 200’.

The only glimmer of hope is the new Victorian government’s very different attitude to windfarm developments that finally seems to put a little more balance into the discussion. Windfarms should be treated like any other industrial development, especially when the site is zoned for agricultural purposes. As the Victorian Planning Panel recently found, it is inequitable that “non-stakeholders will incur additional costs in the course of their normal farming practices as a result of the wind energy facility”.

If it is ‘inequitable’ from an additional cost perspective, what is it when government considers the life of a pilot, acting diligently and within the law, not even worth a decent mandatory notification system?

Other States should adopt a similar, more rational approach that removes the special status afforded windfarm developments and provides more balance in an assessment of their impacts.

The issue of long-term environmental sustainability has also been unquestioned and a full life-cycle analysis of the environmental costs of windfarms might shed a new light on their environmental credentials, including the amount of energy and resources used in manufacture, and the fate of the turbines when they reach the end of their economic life.

The windfarm development approach of splitting rural communities by offering a clear economic advantage to some landholders while externalising costs to their neighbours and to sectors such as aerial application has the appearance of questionable ethics or even cynical manipulation.

If ever an industry needed clear independent appraisal and stronger regulation, it is the windfarm industry.

The wind turbines themselves may also have a significant downwind plume of highly disturbed air that could prove disastrous for a low flying aircraft. This downwind plume may extend some 15 times the height of the blade tips. Where such significantly disturbed air has been identified behind other aircraft, then wake turbulence separation standards are applied, but such is the government lack of questioning of the wind industry that there is little available research, let alone policy action or regulation.

There has been a NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into Rural Windfarms, a CASA consultancy looking at tall structures that are not near airports, a CASA workshop on man-made obstacles, a Commonwealth Inquiry into safeguarding airports and a current Senate Community Affairs Committee inquiry into the social and economic impacts of windfarms – all of which have received submissions from AAAA arguing that windfarms are a threat to aviation safety.

And still no coherent policy or regulation securing aviation safety and now the windfarm death of an ag pilot in the US.

The answer is not to penalise the long-established aviation industry that is the victim. Inflicting buffer zones is another economic penalty unlikely to be compensated for by the windfarm developers and which may take more agricultural land – and aviation – out of production.

The answer is to give aviation safety primacy. The Commonwealth and States must develop a national policy on windfarms that objectively assesses the appropriateness of their location and their safety implications, and if they are still approved, provides a fair compensation mechanism for all those affected by them, including aerial applicators.

Windfarms? Go solar.