This cover image, chosen above all others, to entice and introduce readers towards the magnificence and sheer beauty of arguably the most attractive regional city in NSW, will be forever blighted, if the Orange Community Renewable Energy Park, gains development consent in its proposed location.

The northwestern gateway welcomes our visitors from the vast tracts of land to our northern reaches along the historic Mitchell Highway.

Adjacent to the site in 1824, early missionary travellers Backhouse and Walker came across a blacksmith's workshop at the crossing of Broken Shaft Creek on their pilgrimage from Byng to Wellington, will now be transfixed by a degraded industrial precinct, some 73 hectares in size.

Orange is a city where so many residents take pride in its regal appearance and so many have worked tirelessly to retain and blend a majestic hinterland with rural lifestyles.

Dedicated community leaders, city luminaries and countless well-meaning citizens, both past and present, have contributed some much to our envious way of life.

Our city, which receives so much national praise and exposure, should not tolerate a haphazard, externally conceived development to wreck the sweeping vista descending down Ammerdown Hill.

If this proposal succeeds, as you travel towards Orange from Molong past the civic sign that welcomes you to "Australia's Colour City", and if you can see beyond the sustained glint and glare of 16,000 solar panels, there will be a battleship grey industrial park that you will need to endure for the next 25 years or more.

The placement of an industrial park in full visibility of locals and visitors, on our principal thoroughfare, one kilometre from the city's urban zone, would be a triumph of ad hoc development over orderly planning, opportunism over vision, blandness over unique rural character and poor judgement over common sense.

The merits of solar energy, as a component in a balanced mix of energy generation options, is not in debate.

Nor is the acceptance that as a responsible community, Orange and surrounds, could be expected to provide a suitable site for energy generation, if dispersed generation is deemed best national policy and accepting that any coherent national energy direction is fraught.

What is in question is whether a location, chosen by chance, consulted with no one, proposed through stealth, impacting many, but only rewarding a few, is an appropriate site for an industrial landscape.

Inform yourself and have your say with a formal letter to Orange City Council.

We live in a democracy and we accept the ultimate verdict, but don't let apathy deliver a default result where you just wonder, how did this eyesore happen so close to Orange?