Social License
Not every renewable project is a good proposal, they can be in the wrong spot.
EDF and its city-based partners have no social licence to build pumped hydro in the Dungowan valley. They never will. They couldn't have picked a worse spot for pumped hydro.
Most local residents do not want this monstrosity ruining our valley. It will adversely impact our way of life and the natural environment. It is already dividing our once cohesive community.
The site on which EDF has chosen to build the Dungowan Pumped Hydro Energy Storage (PHES) powerplant goes against the advice of the NSW government's pumped hydro experts. When it ignores the experts and best practice, EDF will never have social licence.
In 2018, the NSW government published a Pumped Hydro Roadmap to encourage investment in the technology. On page 31 of that Roadmap, the government's experts from the Australian National University (ANU) set out a list of "show stoppers", defining where you should NOT build a pumped hydro station. One of those show-stoppers is that you should not build your pumped hydro power station on prime agricultural land - what the bureaucrats call Biophysical Strategic Agricultural Land (BSAL). Another show-stopper is that you should not overlay a reservoir over a named watercourse.
EDF's project appears to breach these two show-stoppers. Spring Gully is a named watercourse in NSW. It runs through the property EDF purchased at 313 Dungowan Dam Road in Ogunbil (Lot 2 DP 749796). It is watercourse #9277. EDF's own diagrams clearly show the bottom reservoir near Dungowan Creek overlaying the natural watercourse of Spring Gully.
The NSW government publishes maps to indicate where prime agricultural land (BSAL) is likely to be found. Every single property along Dungowan Creek is mapped as likely BSAL, including EDF's proposed pumped hydro site. According to the NSW government, these maps "do not fully reflect the existence of BSAL on the ground". Given the rich agricultural soils of our area, it is possible that much of the land beyond the mapped riparian areas of Dungowan Creek is also BSAL - including the site that EDF has chosen.
Not every renewable project is a good proposal. Like the Dungowan PHES project, they can be in the wrong spot. EDF couldn't have picked a worse spot for pumped hydro. That's why this particular project will never have social licence.