Draft National Wind Farm Development Guidelines - July 2010

A.6.6 Decommissioning
Planning & Consultation
The decommissioning of a wind farm project should occur in consultation with project
stakeholders. As this will occur many years after construction it is likely that there will have
been changes to the makeup of the local community and local area itself. As such, new
stakeholders should be identified and the rehabilitation requirements should be cognisant
of any changes which may have occurred in the area. Community involvement in
assessing rehabilitation requirements is recommended.
Technical Area Community Inputs
It will be necessary to once again determine impacts and mitigation measures associated
with landscape and EMI when decommissioning or rehabilitating the site.
A.7 Cumulative Impacts
The cumulative impact of multiple wind farm facilities in a region is likely to become an
increasingly important issue for wind farm developments in Australia.
Where multiple wind farm proposals exist in close proximity to the wind farm project under
development, the following items should be considered:
• The local community are likely to be familiar with the potential impacts of a wind farm
in their region. As such the nature of enquiries may be different to that of a
community who have little knowledge or experience of operating wind farms.
Community participation activities should be developed cognisant of this fact, and
adequate resources for dealing with these queries should be available (for example,
the presence of technical experts at community information events).
• The local community may be “fatigued” with community engagement processes. In
other words, an abundance of community meetings, information sessions or materials
about various developments, may result in community members tiring of attending
local events or engaging in local discussions or activities. Consolidating
communication and consultation activities with other developers may be beneficial,
or developers may wish to consider using alternative methods for engaging the local
community. Whilst always encouraged, it may be particularly prudent to ask key
stakeholders the method and frequency of consultation they prefer and tailor the
consultation plan to meet their requirements.
• Developers should maintain a dialogue with other wind farm developers in the region
to ensure that consultation and/or development activities are planned cognisant of
each other, and opportunities for collaboration between developers could be
explored. Such an approach is encouraged in order to limit the risk of consultation
“fatigue” and subsequent disengagement from the process by the community and
key stakeholders, which would be to the detriment of both developers.
A.8 Practice notes
A.8.1 Stakeholder Identification Checklist
The checklist presented in Table A-1 is indicative only.
When preparing the Communication and Consultation Plan/s, the relevance of these
stakeholders to the individual wind farm development, and the stages when consultation
with these stakeholders may be required, will vary considerably between projects.
Furthermore, this list is not exhaustive; stakeholder types who are not listed in this table may
also be present and developers should conduct further investigations to identify these.
Draft National Wind Farm Development Guidelines – 2 July 2010 Page 33