Oaky Hydro Electric site for sale

 

Essential Energy has placed the 214ha Oaky Hydro site on the market. The sales pitch suggests that there is a 2,700 ML dam restoration opportunity with a Hydropower Station connected to the network with a 8.2 km frontage to Oaky River.

The Commercial Real Estate advertisement for the sale (here) includes a range of photographs, while  a 19 September 2022 story by Caroline Riches, Oaky River hydro site offers rare opportunity provides additional information. 

During the 1950s, Albanian civil engineer Zihni Buzo designed and oversaw the implementation of the dam and hydropower scheme here, which supplied renewable energy to the local area from 1956 until 2013, when severe flooding burst the banks and damaged the infrastructure. The Wayback Machine includes the report on the events surrounding the flood event of 23 February 2013. The damage was never repaired.  

Zihni, father to playwright Alex Buzo, was a visionary man who saw the Oaky Scheme as a first step in broader hydro and water development including pumped hydro. While the scheme was not large by today's standards it was all very exciting. Aunt Margaret worked in the Thiess office, Thiess were handling constriction, while Zihni took us all to the site to show us the works in progress. 

The costs of construction added to power bills. By the time of the abolition of the county councils in 1995, the amortisation of the original costs by the New England County Council was flowing through in below average electricity prices. These gains now vanished. I have always felt, perhaps wrongly, that the the troubles that befell Oaky were one of the collateral costs of the 1955 Sydney electricity heist. Perhaps now we might see the scheme reborn. 

It's been bloody wet on the the New England!

 As I write it's cold and blowy. That plus cloud has kept the frosts away. The ground is sodden from the constant rain. As the ABC's Lara Webster reports in Northern New South Wales farmers see their wettest conditions in decades as rain keeps falling, this is the third year in a row of above average rainfall.

It's now hard to remember the previous drought, but the effects are still there. This year's autumn show was much less spectacular than in previous years because the trees are still feeling the impact of the long drought. Many trees died, others carry dead branches, while some have simply fallen over under the impact of rain and wind. 

Covid adds to the case for New England statehood

 With just three posts last year, this blog has been in sad decline! The combination of personal circumstances with covid has had a devastating effect. It’s not that I had covid, just that covid made life very disruptive and difficult.

Two posts this year on my personal blog (Covid woes - further failures in public policy, Covid woes - virtual lockdowns) look very briefly at covid policy issues from a personal perspective. Covid has demonstrated the continuing importance of the states. It has also provided very tangible evidence of the continued importance of our fight for New England self-government.

Because we don’t exist in a formal sense, because we have no power, the covid measures that might have protected us, that might have allowed us to manage, were simply swamped in that blancmange called NSW. We do need our own state.