The community information days held in Bothwell and Miena in February were well attended, with 19 at Bothwell and approximately 80 at Miena. Displays included the revised layout, photomontages from key viewpoints and noise modelling maps. Epuron’s Martin Poole and Donna Bolton gave a detailed presentation explaining the layout revision and answered questions. To download a copy of the information day presentation please click here.

Concerns raised included visual impact, noise, eagles, impacts to fly fishing areas and property values. We will continue to avoid and minimise impacts where possible and to document how we have addressed the concerns raised. Positive feedback included generation of clean power and emissions reduction, benefits to the local economy and jobs.

We thank everyone who took the time to join us at these information days. We appreciate your input and hope the sessions were informative. We also thank those who assisted at the venues and with catering.

Thank you to all those who are engaging with us on this proposal. We will continue to work to minimise impacts and maximise the benefits for the local community.

In the coming months we will host some smaller briefings with our consultant from Marshall Day Acoustics who was unfortunately unable to join us at the Miena information session as planned due to the short-notice Covid-19 border closure in Victoria. These briefings will provide interested community members with an opportunity to gain a better understanding of noise modelling and assessment. We will send out further information about this in due course.

Our eighth and final survey of eagle utilisation across the site will be completed shortly. Once this has been done we will collate all the data from both survey years and do a final review of the layout.

We intend to lodge the development application and accompanying Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) towards the end of the year. After the EIS has been reviewed and accepted it will go on exhibition for public submissions. Epuron will hold community information sessions when the proposal is on exhibition to provide an opportunity to discuss the EIS with the project team and ask any questions out about the proposal.