In the mail this afternoon was a circular from the council giving notice of a couple of changes to the district plan. Normally I wouldn’t bother trying to seek this stuff out, but if it arrives in the mail I’ll give it a read. But there’s something in here I can’t quite figure out.

Here’s part of the description for Proposed Plan Change 32:

The Council aims to take a proactive stance in preparing for likely applications for wind farms in the Wellington City area…

And here’s part of the description for Proposed Plan Change 33:

The Council has further identified important ridgelines and hilltops so that everyone has certainty over where we propose to manage the visual effects of development in those locations.

Does anyone else detect a contradiction here? It seems that at the same time as the Council says it’s encouraging wind farms, it’s putting extra protection around the very spots that would be the best wind farm locations. Weird.

<rant>Personally I can’t wait to see wind farms all over Wellington. Pencarrow Head needs a wind farm. The undeveloped ridgeline to the west of our house where the sun goes down every night needs a row of turbines. Wellington has an opportunity to take a greater responsibility for its own energy use, and through this we can hope to avoid building more dams in conveniently distant but unfortunately pretty locations; avoid another CO₂ spewing Huntly; avoid going nuclear.</rant>

But I suspect I might be in a minority on this one.