Plans to build a 97MW wind farm just outside the Victorian Western District town of Hawkesdale will be challenged in the Supreme Court next week by a group of locals hoping to have the planning permit for the project revoked, just as construction is about to begin.
A group made up of about 25 community members filed legal proceedings against developer Global Power Generation and Victoria’s minister for planning Richard Wynne in February – and has also put in an injunction to stop works on the Hawkesdale wind farm until the court case, due to be heard on Monday and Tuesday next week.
The case will be argued around the legality of the planning minister’s decisions to amend GPG’s planning permit in late 2017 and extend it in November of last year. According to local reports, the state government first issued a permit for the site in 2011 and has since extended it four times.
But the real beef of the local group – which has called itself The People of the Small Town of Hawkesdale Incorporated – centres around the proximity of some of the project’s turbines to the border of the small town.
