Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
These EMPs are the:
• Vegetation Management Plan;
• Bird and bat Monitoring Plan;
• Turbine Shutdown Contingency Plan;
• Orange-Bellied Parrot Management Plan; and
• Eagle (Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle
Aquila audax fl eayi
, WTE and white-
bellied sea-eagle
Haliaeetus leucogaster
, WBSE) Management Plan.
The EMPs included a range of surveys and actions at the wind farms, with many
evolving over time. A comprehensive review of the EMPs in 2010 provided the
opportunity to apply an adaptive management approach to the actions in the EMPs
to determine their effectiveness and utility. Given the complexity of this task and the
need to conduct this evaluation in a collaborative manner with the Regulators, a
specifi c approach was developed to complete the task. The purpose of this paper is
to detail the approach used and the fi ndings of the review.
The Review Process
There were a number of steps in the review. They were:
1. Establish a working group of relevant personnel. The key stakeholders in this
exercise were:
-
Representative from the wind farms' owner and operator (Roaring 40s at the time);
-
The State Regulator (the Tasmanian EPA);
-
Ecologists from the Department of Primary Industry, Water, Environment and
Parks (DPIPWE); and
-
Facilitator.
2. Establish an agreed process for review. The agreed process was a top-down
(high-level) risk assessment approach. It involved (in order):
-
Developing a risk matrix to identify the environmental risks associated with
the wind farms (using likelihood and consequence categories and descrip-
tions). Key steps were to:
• Identify the species and/or species groups that were deemed high risk and
allocate a priority rating to them; and
• Identify the key potential impacts (direct, i.e. collisions with turbines, and
indirect, i.e. disturbance effects, see Hull et al.
2014
for further details).
-
Developing criteria to evaluate the effectiveness of each action to determine if
it should cease, be continued with modifi cations, continue as is, or a new one
developed. The following questions were asked in the evaluation:
-
Did the actions target the risks appropriately?;
-
Did they target the potential impacts appropriately?;
