Over the last few weeks there has been an active debate unfolding in Grocott’s Mail about the merits of the proposed Winds of Change wind farm.
Over the last few weeks there has been an active debate unfolding in Grocott’s Mail about the merits of the proposed Winds of Change wind farm.
Many have been in favour of the project, while others have questioned its merits. To put things into perspective it is important to add some facts, so that we can all understand what is being debated and how the process works.
On 30 May 2008 Grocott’s Mail covered the proposed wind farm. A year later, this article attracted an investor, and on 29 May 2009 Grocott’s Mail ran another front page article about the wind farm.
On 6 June, the Daily Dispatch also placed an article on its front page. It is not every day that an investor is willing to fund a R560-million infrastructure development in a town like Grahamstown, and to place 26% thereof (R145-million) into an educational trust for the children of Grahamstown.
It was good front page news and as a result, the flyers stuck to poles around our town and region, mentioning the wind farm in big, bold letters. It was pretty difficult to miss that this was being proposed.
After all of this publicity, nobody wrote letters endorsing or criticising the proposal. This was an efficient way of testing whether our community wanted a wind farm so as to minimise wasting an investor’s money on an expensive Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).
Nobody complained, so the next step was to commission an EIA, which advertised on 10 July that there would be a public hearing on 22 July. This meeting was where people could come to find out more, criticise, complain, compliment, or do whatever else they wished to do.
Once the wheels of this whole process are set in motion, it becomes very difficult to change the direction of a project.
The reason for choosing the current proposed location is that it is the best site for wind energy in the area, both due to the fact that it is close to the electrical grid for power distribution and due to the fact that it is easily accessible by truck. This is very important for bringing in the turbines.
There are many other places to put a wind farm, but they are not as good in this regard. If anybody had a problem with the wind farm, it would therefore have been much better to mention it 16 months ago when the idea was first proposed in Grocott’s Mail for all to see.
To change the location now will delay the wind farm by as much as two to three years, and potentially chase the investor away.
So what do we stand to gain from a wind farm?
The wind farm will be 26% owned by a community trust for the education of our children, in line with the triple bottom line sustainable development principles of the investors. This trust, which will own a share of the wind farm worth R145-million, will, after about seven years, be able to invest in the region of R18-million per annum in the improvement of education in our town so that we can improve the lives and futures of our community.
The wind farm will contribute eight megawatts on a calm day and up to 36 megawatts on a windy day into our grid making our town essentially self sufficient power-wise. Grahamstown is the closest point to the wind farm, so, although by law the power is sold to Eskom, it will flow to Grahamstown.
If there is load shedding in the region, the only place the electricity can go is to us. So we will have secure power. In addition, the wind farm will be selling power to Eskom at a rate that is higher than what we buy it back from for use in Grahamstown.
Eskom does not have enough power to go around, and the fact that it loses a lot of its profitability through distributing power to small distant markets, such as ours, means it is happy if we solve our own problems, and leave it to the important business of providing power to the big markets. So, when we turn on a light in the future, 26% of the cost of power will be educating our kids, as opposed to paying for coal in Witbank.
The wind farm will result in us being responsible for reducing the amount of pollution our town produces over the next 40 years by five million tons of coal. To put that in perspective, that is enough coal to cover about 5000 sport fields in a layer one meter thick.
In addition to the carbon that a coal power plant would release (providing us with power for 40 years) it would also release about 3200 tons of mercury, 2000 tons arsenic, 1600 tons nickel, 4400 tons selenium, 504 tons cadmium, 378 tons chrome and 115 tons of lead into the atmosphere and slag heaps where they would leach into the water and hurt people and their environment.
These are very harmful chemicals, which is one of the reasons why people that grow up in polluted areas tend to have developmental problems, learning disabilities and higher risks of cancer. In coal waste polluted areas fish, frogs, plants, birds and many insects don’t get to grow up at all.
I have grown up in this community and am committed to conserving it and helping it grow sustainably. As a young beekeeper, I used to often visit the sisters at Hillandale long before it was a monastery.
Before the brothers came to our community Sister Carol asked me to remove all of the bees from the houses there so the brothers would not be shocked, as they came to our community from other countries which fear the occasionally aggressive African bees, and we wanted them to feel at home with us from the word go. I later kept bees with the brothers for some time.
Through great work, and investment, the brothers built up the area to how it is now. I highly commend this work, and appreciate all who have written in in support of the worries the brothers have about the wind farm.
However, as I mentioned earlier, the time to have suggested alternatives to this development would have been ideally 16 months ago. Alternatives can be found now, but this will delay the process by up to three years.
It may also chase the investors away, and whoever we find next may not be willing to put 26% into a community trust to educate our kids, and may not be willing to discuss anything at all. So, for all of us, we have to ask ourselves – will it not be good to look up at the hill and realise that those turbines turning gently in the wind are making our world a better place, and investing in our future.
For the Christians among us, especially those who have contributed much carbon by coming here to meditate at the monastery, will it not be an excellent reminder to us that we are all destroying God’s creation and that the community we live with is at least trying to do something about this problem. Let us all join together and work as a community in making a better future, rather than find reasons to postpone saving our planet.
Dr Garth Cambray is the director of Makana Meadery and is a lobbyist of the Winds of Change wind farm project.
