‘Completely destroyed’: Melton joins fight against renewable power towers on ancient volcano site

Mount Kororoit rises from the mostly flat and treeless plains west of Melbourne – a local landmark fenced in by a grid of ploughed paddocks in the green wedge between Melton and Sydenham.

The ancient volcano is the highest point in the city of Melton, a place of Aboriginal cultural significance, and a vantage from which Tasmanian grazier John Batman is said to have stood in 1835 and surveyed “the most beautiful sheep pasturage I ever saw”.

Eons after Mount Kororoit last erupted, the volcanic plains at its foot are smouldering again.

Protest signs have been pinned to many of the neighbourhood’s farm fences, reading: “Stop AusNet’s Towers”.

As Victoria races to rewire its energy sources from mostly brown coal to renewables, local resistance against dominating new towers and wires has reached Melbourne’s fringe.

The Western Renewables Link is a 190-kilometre high-voltage transmission line that will cut through rural parts of Melton as it runs from the wind farms of western Victoria to outer suburban Sydenham.

The line’s pylon towers will rise to a height of 70 metres where it passes Mount Kororoit, standing 20 metres taller than Melton’s tallest peak.

This week, Melton City Council formally opposed the plan to build the overhead transmission line through its green wedge zone, arguing the visual and social impact would be unacceptable. It is the first urban council to campaign against the project, which is also bitterly opposed by some regional groups.

“I’m lucky enough to live in the northern part of our municipality, up there at Diggers Rest, and you come into the beautiful Macedon Ranges and you see the foothills of the mountains, and it’s amazing,” Melton councillor John Verdon said at the council meeting.

“The only mountain our residents get to see is Mount Kororoit, and it’s going to be completely destroyed and damaged by these massive towers right out the front.”

Over coming months, The Age is strengthening its focus on Melbourne’s booming west with a special series examining the positives and challenges the region faces. In October, our reporters will moderate a West of Melbourne Economic Development Alliance’s (WoMEDA) summit to discuss a vision for the western suburbs’ success. The alliance of university, industry, community and local government experts works to unlock the west’s economic potential.

Melton Council has called on the state government to put the transmission line underground “to the maximum extent possible”.

In a submission to the project’s environment effects statement, unanimously endorsed by councillors, it said it did not oppose the overall project, but believed that the overhead line would leave a long-lasting scar on the landscape.

It argued that underground transmission was preferable, and would help the project win a social licence from the community. It rejected project proponent AusNet’s claim that going underground would be up to 16 times more expensive than going overhead.

“This project, should it proceed, will have a profound multi-generational and physical impact within our city,” Travis Conway, Melton’s manager of city strategy, wrote in the submission.

According to Conway, these impacts would include the industrialisation of rural parts of Melton, the loss of part of council-owned MacPherson Park, visual blight for the new Harkness cemetery and the obstruction of flight paths around the Melton airfield.

Airfield head of flying operations Evan Reeve said that if the overhead line was built, it would be impossible to run a safe flying system, and he would have to close.

“For me as the airport operator, I wouldn’t want to take the risk if someone hits one of these power lines,” Reeve said.

“I’m supposed to provide a safe place for people to take off and land, and I don’t agree that that’s what we’re left with.”

The council also argued the airport’s closure would reduce local job opportunities in a region with the lowest number of locally available jobs of any outer urban council area in Melbourne.

Beginning on October 28, public hearings led by an independent advisory committee of planning experts will assess the Western Renewables Link, which has been planned for more than five years.

The link is critical to the Allan government’s planned transition from an energy grid mostly powered by ageing and climate polluting coal-fired power stations to renewable energy.

The link, which will create new connections between the Victorian and NSW electricity grids, would transmit power from renewable energy zones in the state’s west.

The Western Renewables Link is one section of the politically contentious, 475-kilometre Victoria New South Wales Interconnector (VNI-West).

A spokesperson for AusNet said a fully underground transmission line was not feasible for the project “because it would take much longer to complete and wouldn’t be delivered in a timely fashion to meet the urgent need for additional transmission capacity”.

The costs for even short lengths of undergrounding were cost-prohibitive, the spokesperson said.

“Ultimately, it is Victorian energy users who will pay for this project, so cost is a factor.”

Professor Bruce Mountain, director of Victoria University’s Victoria Energy Policy Centre, said the Allan government had refused to release costings for the Western Renewables Link project.

“It’s clear that the local environmental and land use impacts associated with overhead 500-kilovolt transmission lines, which are very tall and require wide easements, is extremely problematic,” Mountain said.

“The government has failed to release cost estimates of the Western Renewables Link or the VNI-West line. How can AusNet, or the government, reject underground alternatives without having evaluated these alternatives relative to their uncosted preferred lines?”

Coalition energy and resources spokesperson David Davis said the Coalition was disturbed by delays and increased costs in the project. He noted the recent release of Australian Energy Market Operator estimates that showed the cost of high-voltage wire projects had increased substantially.

“The Allan Labor government needs to come clean on the massive costs of these projects, including detailed updated costing. It is only in that way that options such as undergrounding can be realistically considered,” Davis said.

Energy and Resources Minister Lily D’Ambrosio said the state government was focused on lowering power bills and that putting transmission lines underground would cost up to eight times more and take much longer to complete.

“We recognise transmission lines can have impacts for neighbouring landholders, and that is why we are putting in place a new payment of up to $40,000 for eligible near neighbours,” D’Ambrosio said.

The West of Melbourne Summit, presented by WoMEDA with The Age, will be held on October 22-23. For details go to womeda.com.au

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