Representation by Christopher Corbin
- Date submitted
- 31 January 2022
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
I am resident in the Parish of Isleham, frequently walk in the local area and appreciate the local landscape. I understand our need for renewable energy but I believe that my visual amenity will be substantially adversely affected by the very large-scale solar panel installations and remarkably large battery systems that are proposed in the near vicinity to Isleham. The proposed installations engulf many of the villages over a vast area nearby to where I live. However, beyond this, I believe that food security is an increasingly pressing issue for the UK and that we can ill afford to lose 2800 acres of what is self-evidently highly productive farmland. I also believe that there are potentially serious issues in relation to the health effects of toxic chemistry (such as cadmium salts) in the solar panels leaching into a vitally important aquifer. Lithium based battery energy storage systems are known to be associated with fire risk and that the fire can be inextinguishable and of extremely high energy. Solar pv panels have a limited life, they are mostly constructed in China (and reputedly often in poor working conditions by conscripted labour) or other distant places and transported large distances to the UK; the construction of a solar installation involves many energy-intensive processes and in the case of this proposal, major earthworks, all of which have a grossly negative carbon or environmental impact. At the end of the useful life of the installation, decommissioning is unlikely to involve recycling to any great degree because of the cost and inefficiency, so the panels are likely to end in landfill, further creating a toxic hazard. In my opinion this proposal will only afford short term gain in the form of an intermittent energy source while causing tragic destruction of landscape and loss of amenity to the residents, removing a very large area of prime food-producing land from use permanently because of contamination and will leave behind a major toxic legacy.