BY ISABEL EVERETT
The solar farm spans the length of 5 football fields, sitting on a previous land fill site, and is expected to save rate payers around $9 million dollars over its 25-year life span.
The farm will produce enough energy to power the equivalent of 1,300 households, significantly cutting councils electricity costs.
"Its an impressive site to see whats on the surface, but to also understand that this is on a prior landfill site that wasn't capable of any agricultural purpose, so to give it such a good environmental purpose is really clever," Port Stephens MP and Shadow Minister for the Environment Kate Washington said.
A recent purchase-power agreement to source electricity from the state's largest wind farm, moves Newcastle city council to become the first local government in NSW to move to 100 percent renewable's as of next year.
"Newcastle city council is the first council to have created and built a solar farm and as of January first, all of councils operations will be sourced from renewable energy and that's a remarkable outcome," Kate Washington said.
Newcastle residents can drop off pre-sorted recyclables such as scrap metals, sorted yellow bin recyclables, paper and cardboard, clean untreated wood and soft plastic at the Resource Recovery Center free of charge, diverting around 5,700 tonnes of waste from landfill each year.
"Newcastle city council is doing exactly what we need to see happening, they are giving people the opportunity to be more environmentally conscious," Kate Washington said.
"Communities across the state are already there, they want to know what they can do to achieve better environmental outcomes, to reduce land fill and improve our sustainability."
State MP for Port Stephens Kate Washington, Lord Mayor Nuatali Nelmes and Cr Peta
Winney-Baartz
State MP for Port Stephens Kate Washington, City of Newcastle
Business Development Manager Mark Johnson,Lord Mayor Nuatali Nelmes, Hon Taylor Martin MLC and Cr Peta Winney-Baartz
