A furious television personality has criticised a “secretive” energy company’s plan to build a giant battery farm next to her home.
Catriona Rowntree is opposing a proposed 350MW/700MWh lithium battery farm on farmland next to her Little River home, between Geelong and Melbourne at the foot of You Yangs Regional Park.
She has joined the close-knit community struggle to oppose the The sheer size of ACEnergy 770-hectare project amid fears it will spoil the view from the national park and discourage tourists from visiting the area.
The longtime host of Getaway and Country House Hunters Australia is ‘fighting to protect’ her town from the dangerous farm that will ruin views from the park and discourage tourists from visiting the area.
The land adjacent to Rowntree’s is prone to bushfires and has been designated as an Aboriginal cultural heritage site.
“The State Government itself has put a significant landscape layer on this region because half a million tourists visiting the You Yangs will be looking directly down on this estate,” Rowntree said. told Sky News host Peta Credlin on Tuesday.
She accused those at ACEnergy of asking the State Planning Minister, Sonya Kilkenny, to “wipe it clean, put a new layer over it and start again”.
Getaway host Catriona Rowntree is opposing a proposed lithium battery farm set to be built next to her Little River home
ACEnergy’s massive 770-hectare lithium battery farm will be built at the foot of the You Yangs Regional Park
Rowntree said the fact that the area is prone to bushfires should have been enough to disqualify the farm from being built.
“372 lithium freight containers covering almost 40 hectares of land… You’ve seen how many fires actually occur in this area on our property,” she said.
The consultation phase of the farm’s development ends this weekend.
Rowntree is confident that her community, surprised by the proposal, will unite and oppose it.
“I think it’s amazing that the people who tried to push this through didn’t take into account how strongly our community would feel about this,” she added.
Rowntree claims she was given a week to raise her objections to the project after receiving a letter in the mail last month.
The notice was dated August 8, but the TV star claims he only received it on August 16.
After hearing about the proposal, Rowntree began gathering support to oppose it.
The The Victoria Department of Transport and Planning is now considering the proposal.
A decision about the future of the farm is is expected by the end of the year.
Ms Rowntree accused ACEnergy of lying in its proposal for the battery farm, which she believes is both dangerous and counterproductive.
ACEnergy states on its website that the farm provide a ‘reliable and flexible storage solution’ and ‘balance energy supply and demand in the area’.
Rowntree alleged that ACEnergy had attempted to make the farm’s application process “as difficult as possible” so that her community could not object to it.
Her local councillors heard about the project at the same time as her, as the application was submitted as a green energy project and they were therefore not affected.
She said if the council had been made aware of the project it ‘would never have passed the admission test’.
Rowntree accused ACEnergy’s advisers of “outright lying” to get the application approved and claimed the proposal was full of inaccuracies.
Daily Mail Australia has reached out to ACEnergy for comment.