Yandin Wind Farm

RPS is helping to diversify Western Australia’s energy mix through the development of the state’s largest wind farm.

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Challenge

From 2008 to 2017, our environmental specialists have supported project developers to understand and manage potential impacts to the local environment from the Yandin Wind Farm, while assisting proponents to navigate complex environmental approval pathways under both state and federal environmental protection legislation.

Planning to develop the wind farm on farmland close to the township of Cataby, which has a designated ‘Important Bird Area’ an area close by, the project required robust ecological assessments to inform the siting of turbines, alignment of transmission infrastructure, and provide confidence to authorities that important species and habitat would be adequately protected during construction and operations.

Solution

RPS completed baseline ecological assessments to underpin the submission of a Development Application to the Shire of Dandaragan, Section 38 referral to the state Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) under the Environmental Protection Act 1986, and later to the (then) Commonwealth Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.

With Carnaby’s Black Cockatoo habitat near to the wind farm site—a species with a conservation status of ‘endangered’ under state and federal environmental protection legislation, it was vital that ecological impacts were well understood and carefully managed.

Our environmental team completed a range of ecological surveys to inform assessments by authorities and subsequent environmental approvals, including:

• Targeted Level 1 Flora and Vegetation Survey
• Targeted Flora and Vegetation Environmental Impact Assessment
• Avifauna Assessment
• Terrestrial Fauna Assessment

With ecological research underpinning the wind farm’s development approach and a design geared towards impact avoidance and minimisation, state and Commonwealth environmental agencies were confident that the proposal would not result in significant impacts to the receiving environment and determined that formal assessment would not be warranted.