Uranquinty residents are worried their small country town could become chock-full of solar farms, with three separate projects being proposed in recent years.
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International solar company Bison Energy is the latest group to target the town, submitting an application for a 16-hectare, five-megawatt solar farm on Oxley Bridge Road.
The plans come just months after BayWa R.E received approval for a 42-hectare farm just off the Olympic Highway, and Origin Energy has previously confirmed it is looking at building a solar farm alongside its existing Uranquinty power station.
Local farmer Bruce Harris said he fears the projects could be "just the tip of the iceberg" and result in even more solar farms if they go ahead. "You could say this is the thin edge of the wedge," he said.
"They'll say 'this is a small one, this is a small one' and then the precedent will be set."
The Bison Energy proposal is on a property less than two kilometres away from the centre of Uranquinty.
Mr Harris said he expects most of the town to be upset by the close proximity.
"There's millions of acres of land between here and the South Australia border where they could put solar farms galore and it wouldn't bother anybody," he said.
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Deb Bewick, the president of the Uranquinty Progress Association, questioned why the community had not been consulted on the project,
"How many more of these are out there? This has supposedly been in the works for two years and we haven't heard anything," she said.
"There's absolutely no benefit to us as a community and they're changing the landscape around us."
Bison Energy's head of business development Brendan Murphy assured local residents the facility, which would include 13,000 panels, is much smaller than most solar farms.
He also said the small scale of the project meant it will be able to hook directly into the local grid and rely almost entirely on local contractors.
"It all stays in the community," he said. "We'll get local trades, local development, local accommodation ... it will be a good, quick injection."
Mr Murphy also said securing a connection to the energy grid can be a big hurdle for potential solar farms, meaning Uranquinty will not necessarily receive three solar farms.
The proposed farm would have a lifespan of 30 years, after which it could be completely removed and the land returned to its former state.
Mr Murphy said the property is the ideal location as it "doesn't have a high land grade use" and is just a few hundred metres away from the Uranquinty substation.
If approved, he is hoping to have the farm up and running halfway through next year.
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