{"id":18187,"date":"2026-05-25T12:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T12:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/18187\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T12:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T12:50:09","slug":"renewables-company-acerez-destroys-indigenous-rock-shelter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/18187\/","title":{"rendered":"Renewables company ACEREZ destroys Indigenous rock shelter"},"content":{"rendered":"

A renewable energy company has admitted it knew about an Indigenous rock shelter in Central West New South Wales that its workers have damaged beyond repair.<\/p>\n

ACEREZ has apologised for destroying the site in the Mudgee district while clearing land for power lines<\/a> to connect the Central West Orana Renewable Energy Zone (REZ) to the grid.<\/p>\n

The destruction of the cultural site comes months after the company was criticised for leaving about 60 native bird hatchlings homeless<\/a> after felling “ancient” trees for the project.<\/p>\n

ACEREZ chief executive Steve Masters said the latest incident happened while workers were cutting an access track on private property.<\/p>\n

“An Aboriginal heritage rock shelter that had been identified in the project’s planning approval was damaged beyond recovery,” he said in a statement.<\/p>\n

“We are deeply sorry.<\/p>\n

“The loss of this rock shelter is permanent, and nothing we say can undo that.”\"Two<\/p>\n

ACEREZ is clearing land in the Central West Renewable Energy Zone to build transmission infrastructure. (Supplied: Facebook\/\u00a0Power and Water)<\/p>\n

Mr Masters said the agency apologised “without reservation” to the First Nations community.<\/p>\n

He said the required processes to protect the shelter were not followed.<\/p>\n

“We have been contacting the Traditional Owners directly and will work with them to determine how this site and its story can be acknowledged and honoured from here,” Mr Masters said.<\/p>\n

ACEREZ said it had “immediately paused” work on access tracks after the rock shelter was destroyed, and has launched an investigation into how the incident occurred.<\/p>\n

The NSW Environment Minister Penny Sharpe said the state’s planning department would also conduct an investigaton into the site’s destruction.<\/p>\n

“I am furious about this,” she said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Penny Sharpe says she “demanded” information from ACEREZ about the incident. (AAP: Nikki Short)<\/p>\n

“It should never have happened and is completely unacceptable.”<\/p>\n

Ms Sharpe said she called in the chief executive of ACEREZ to “demand” information about the heritage rock shelter.<\/p>\n

“I sought and received assurances around what measures are being put in place to assess and protect all Aboriginal sites,” she said.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the state government agency EnergyCo, which leads the delivery of the REZs, said in a statement it was “extremely disappointed” by the incident.<\/p>\n

“ACEREZ has failed to conduct its works with the agreed management plans and heritage protection measures,” a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

“EnergyCo has alerted ACEREZ of its failure to comply with its contractual obligations.”<\/p>\n

The ABC understands a traditional owner has since lodged a section 9 emergency protection application for the area under the federal Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act.<\/p>\n

A longer-term section 10 application was also submitted at the same time.<\/p>\n

The ABC has contacted traditional owner groups and the federal environment department for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A renewable energy company has admitted it knew about an Indigenous rock shelter in Central West New South…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17905,5800,22,21,17906,17907,17910,17912,14595,3740,17908,17911,17909,11469],"class_list":["post-18187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-acerez","tag-apology","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-central-west-orana-renewable-energy-zone","tag-central-west-orana-rez","tag-cope","tag-cultural-heritage","tag-damage","tag-first-nations","tag-mudgee","tag-rock-shelter","tag-ulan","tag-wiradjuri"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}