Page 2123 - Week 06 - Thursday, 26 June 2008
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the consultants—
officers from CMD—
presumably the project facilitation organisation identified a number of sites—
as having sufficient size for possible development of a solar plant.
They listed eight blocks. Then it goes on:
No other characteristics beyond size were considered at this point. Any further consideration of these sites will be subject to the results of the consultant’s study.
That is fair enough. So I went to my trusty block and section map and my trusty territory plan and I started to have a look at the blocks. (Second speaking period taken.) The first block on the list is block 498 Stromlo. I opened up my block and section map and I looked and thought, “Gee, that is an enormous block of land.” We did some calculations in the office, and one of my staff went and looked at ACTMAPi. Some of the blocks actually have sizes on them, but they are in square metres and I never know where to put the decimal point to work out how big that is in hectares. I am not sure whether the block is 55 or 550 hectares, but it is a big block. My maths was up to it just before dinner, and I have not gone back to check it.
Then there was another block not very far away, block 418 Stromlo, which is even bigger. It is about 10 percent bigger than that block. They are enormous blocks of land. So I thought, “Gee, they really have in mind an extraordinarily large power plant.” Then I looked at some of the other blocks.
The next block on the list is block 624 Gungahlin, if I am right. It is a pocket handkerchief size. I do not know what they were thinking about and what the size criteria are. I would be interested for the Chief Minister sometime to tell us what the size criteria are.
One of the blocks is block 183 Tennant. I have not checked all of my maths carefully, but I am pretty sure that block 183 Tennant will in fact be under water if we ever build the Tennant dam. I do not think that it is a very good place. Mr Costello actually said the other day, on the record, that the Tennant dam is not off the agenda and it should never be taken off the agenda. I agree wholeheartedly with him.
There are two or three other blocks of land. So I went back and started to look at them very closely. I went back to the first block, block 498 Stromlo. I looked at the block and section map and I said to my staff, “That is on the western side of the Stromlo treatment plant and Mount Stromlo, the Mount Stromlo observatory. That block is on a fairly steep west-facing slope.” I thought, “This does not seem like a very good place to have a solar farm, because it will not get any sun until quite late into the day, and you want to maximise the sun.” I am not an expert about siting solar farms but I would have though flat terrain was probably where you want to put them.
I looked a bit further. I transposed it onto a map on the territory plan and discovered that this enormous block of land, which CMD has identified as meeting at least the
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