Representation by Rosalyn Young
- Date submitted
- 29 March 2023
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
I do not believe that placing industrial scale solar parks on fertile and productive soils is best use of land. There are better ways and places to site solar parks, quite apart from the alternatives of funding and supporting placement of solar panels on supermarket and other industrial size roofing space. Removing food growing land is foolhardy in the current worldwide and national situation. Cottam executives I met did not understand the working of water, how this will increase the already high local flood risks by means of channeling and increasing speed of water flow, and also failed to understand that desktop studies by default ignore the actuality of any situation. They fail to understand the mass effect on local wildlife, simply by not having any relevant study or examples to which they can refer. I believe this proposal to be a foolhardy effort, aimed mainly at money grabbing at the expense and destruction of the local area, it amenities, its heritage, its wildlife, its human inhabitants and their properties, which also uses eco-suspect panels from China made at huge cost to the environment. Eco labelled matters do not always follow eco friendly pathways, this effort being a prime example. I do not support this application; I would support an application that actually had demonstrable benefits to food production, wildlife, and the heritage of an area whilst being able to show actual ecofriendly workings throughout. The applicants also fail utterly to understand the local roadway infrastructure, which is already failing under normal usage of mainly family cars and tractors. The fact that the applicants wanted to use a literal grass and mud trackway for 157.000 tonne lorries access is laughable if it wasn't such a shockingly bad plan. The solar panels have a minimal solar gathering rating, they will not be as efficient as claimed because they will not collect even their maximum here in Lincolnshire where we are in the north of the country (further away from the stronger rays in the south nearer the equator) and where we have good rainfall which assists good plant growth. The placing of 3m high panels will cause glare and noise issues for the residents, and will prevent local barn owls from their natural glide hunting over the land. I fear this application, if approved, will irrevocably wreck the land and the locality, as the applicants have not to my satisfaction demonstrated how they will be able to remove acres of concrete and the pollution involved. I do not believe their plans anyway, as other developers have been shown to renege on any such clean up and infrastructure improvement plans all around the country.