New England REZ line EIS: Upper Hunter horse studs face temporary construction disruption, and a modest anthrax risk remains at Rouchel

What is on exhibition

EnergyCo’s New England REZ Network Infrastructure Project is the backbone for the renewable energy zone centred on Armidale: new dual 500 kV transmission lines that EnergyCo’s 15 October release says will connect the zone to existing infrastructure at Bayswater Power Station near Muswellbrook. The NSW Major Projects register lists it as State significant infrastructure SSI-74175972, a controlled action under the federal environment law (EPBC 2025/10405), with the EIS on exhibition from 15 October to 12 November 2026 and 37 EIS documents attached.

The economic report on the equine cluster, prepared by HoustonKemp, describes the line as around 290 kilometres from near Armidale to Bayswater, with towers typically 45 to 75 metres high and on average about 450 metres apart. It says construction along the whole alignment is expected to run from 2028 to 2034, but on any one property for much shorter periods, from a few weeks to a few months at each tower. The corridor and some access tracks cross the eastern and north-eastern areas of the Equine CIC, the Upper Hunter Equine Critical Industry Cluster.

EnergyCo’s release says the corridor was earlier refined after community feedback to reduce the number of directly affected landowners and of dwellings within 500 metres, and to avoid sensitive areas at Timor Caves and near Barry.

The horses

HoustonKemp’s report describes the Upper Hunter cluster as one of the largest thoroughbred breeding clusters in the world, second only to Kentucky in the United States. The separate equine health assessment, by Kannegieter Equine Specialists, says most equine properties, including the majority of the major thoroughbred breeding operations, are several kilometres from the project and unlikely to be affected. It names the receptors closest to the project as Scone Polo Club, the thoroughbred breeder Kitchwin Hills, Walcha Polocrosse Grounds and Jockey Club, and Gundy Park Equine. Kitchwin Hills has the most potential for interaction, because of access tracks and road upgrades along Waverly Road and its nearness to the corridor.

What the assessment expects from construction is behaviour, not illness: startle reactions, heightened vigilance, horses avoiding the paddocks nearest the works, and changes to grazing or resting for a time. It describes the effects as localised, temporary and manageable. Blasting for tower foundations is not expected near horses: the nearest equine facility is 6.2 kilometres from any potential blasting location. It says No routine night works are proposed in proximity to identified equine receptors, and predicts operational noise from the lines below the thresholds its literature review links to harm in horses.

On money, HoustonKemp concludes that property sales prices are unlikely to be affected by the proposed transmission lines, while values as owners and agents perceive them may fall, most during construction and less over time. It records that cluster stakeholders have raised property devaluation, road safety, effects on horse behaviour and reputational harm, and judges an exodus of thoroughbred operations unlikely.

Its main mitigation is a scheduling one. It recommends that EnergyCo’s construction contractor, once selected, plan works and vehicle movements around the stud’s sensitive periods: breeding in September to November and foaling in August to December.

Anthrax at Rouchel

The Rouchel district sits on the route to Bayswater, and it has history. HoustonKemp’s report notes an anthrax outbreak there in 2007/08 that spanned properties within 60 square kilometres. EnergyCo commissioned a separate assessment from Ausvet and Public Health Matters, because digging, grading and clearing can disturb soil that holds anthrax spores.

For construction workers, Ausvet rates the risk without controls as generally low but still above an acceptable level, and says practical measures can bring it down to very low or negligible. For livestock it is less reassuring. Even with controls, a modest risk of anthrax in livestock remains in the Rouchel area during and after construction, because drought and heavy rain can spread spores whatever the project does. The riskiest works are access roads and deep pile excavations. The controls it lists include avoiding known historical anthrax sites by GPS location, vaccinating livestock, exclusion fencing, water, soil and grazing management, and ongoing advice to landholders.

The report is candid about its limits. It was a desktop assessment done in a limited time, and Site access was not possible prior to completion of the assessment. It recommends that EnergyCo and its contractors re-assess the risk to local residents and farm workers once construction begins and the exact work areas are known. For scale, it records about 2.6 livestock anthrax outbreaks a year in Australia over the last decade, and three reported human cases since the 1980s, all linked to contact with infected livestock.

How to have a say

Submissions go through the project’s Major Projects register page until 12 November. EnergyCo is running information sessions, four of them in the Upper Hunter:

• Gundy: Monday 2 November, 3pm to 6pm, Gundy Soldiers’ Memorial Hall
• Rouchel: Wednesday 4 November, 3pm to 6pm, Rouchel School of Arts Hall
• Scone: Thursday 5 November, 3pm to 6pm, Scone Motor Inn Conference Centre
• Muswellbrook: Friday 6 November, 11am to 2pm, Muswellbrook Library Seminar Room

A webinar explaining how the EIS is laid out and how to make a submission runs on Tuesday 20 October, 4pm to 5pm; EnergyCo’s release has the registration link.

Our read

This section is opinion, based on the facts and documents above.

The reports are reassuring, and the reassurance rests on things that are not yet required. Planning works around breeding and foaling, and re-checking anthrax risk on the ground, are sensible. In the technical reports both are recommendations, the first addressed to a contractor not yet chosen; until an approval makes them conditions, nothing requires them. If the Upper Hunter wants them to bind, the place to say so is a submission asking for them as conditions of approval.

The anthrax work deserves its own reading at Rouchel. It is plain about being done from a desk, and plain that the livestock risk cannot be driven to negligible. Landholders there lived through the 2007/08 outbreak; the sessions at Rouchel and Gundy are where that knowledge can reach the people placing towers and tracks.

What to watch next

After 12 November the register’s next stages are collating submissions and the response to submissions, then assessment and a determination. We will report what the response to submissions says about the equine cluster and Rouchel when it is published.