Representation by Robert Izzard
- Date submitted
- 19 July 2023
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
The proposed new sewage works at Honey Hill, near Cambridge, is a waste of public money and will cause massive destruction to the local environment. It is a clear stitch-up between politicians and developers at the expense of the people and local wildlife that should be protected by the Green Belt, a policy which will be brought into disrepute should this application go ahead. The decision to scrap the existing, perfectly functional and recently renovated to modern standard, Milton sewage works to recover the land for housing, is designed so that anyone but the local people will see benefits. Local services (education, transport, healthcare etc.) will be stretched even further, with next-to zero investment, while the development companies make their cash and run with it. Where are the transport improvements this cash should bring? The healthcare? The new schools? To summarise: benefits to local people, none; cost to local people and environment, huge. This application is simply designed to be part of the facilitation of this cost to locals. The cost to benefit ratio is massive. Environmentally, the removal of the existing site and building of a new site is a massive carbon cost. Given that there is no logical or rational requirement to move the sewage works, why is this carbon going to be released? Has the planning inspectorate, or the government, not seen what global heating is doing to our country and the planet as a whole? It is madness, except from the point of view of the few friends of the “Greater Cambridge Local Plan”, not made by locals, and the applicants. The destruction of the existing Honey Hill site is also of massive concern. Especially during the lockdown, this was a popular venue for local people to walk and cycle, a vital option for physical and mental health improvements. The area has wildlife from wild deer to bats to birds of prey. Removing this option for local folk, from town and countryside, to experience such wildlife will decrease people's health and destroy – kill! – the wildlife that is there now. There is impact on existing public rights of way: they will be further restricted. Where will the local wildlife go? Where will people now walk? Do the developers and “planners” just want to the wildlife to be dead and the local people to stay at home? While I fully appreciate that Honey Hill is currently mostly farmland, the developers' plan to have a “20% biodiversity gain” is nothing but a joke. The current biodiversity on the farmland is very limited precisely because it is farmland and farmers kill everything that gets in their way, so there is little biodiversity on the site itself right now. 20% of zero is still zero, indeed even 100% of zero is still zero, so the promise of the developers is utterly meaningless. There are no real, significant, long-term improvements planned, just a minimal attempt to gloss over the problems, and nothing in the way of maintenance for future generations. There was the opportunity to link into the Wicken Fen Vision, but where is that? The developer will pump many tons of carbon dioxide into the air for no good, rational reason. Where are the plans to make the new site use environmentally friendly power and heating? Where are the solar panels and batteries that should be fitted to make the site as “carbon neutral” as possible? The plans are “to be determined”. Where are the heat pumps? No mention. Add to this the noise and environmental destruction that will be caused by the site traffic on already overloaded local roads near the one school (Fen Ditton) in the area, the pipework that has to be laid to pollute the river even further, and the stench that will now emanate over the whole of east Cambridge (I do not trust the developers' “odour management plan” one bit given how they already cannot manage the odour from Milton), how can this be supported by anyone except the few who will enrich themselves in the process? These people include the politicians, central and local, and developers, but none of them live in the area or care about the environment. The risk of groundwater (chalk aquifer) contamination is far higher at Honey Hill than the existing site, according to DEFRA. Why then is this new site at Honey Hill being considered? Mostly because the local politicians there objected less than at other, more suitable, sites including the existing Milton works. That the aquifer makes this location totally unsuitable for a sewage works has been quietly ignored by the applicant. Let's make it clear: if the aquifer is polluted, as seems quite possible, Cambridge loses its water supply which is already at breaking point. The local Quy Fen, a site of special scientific interest, is also then at risk. Speaking in terms of policy, this building is on Green Belt land. This development is fundamentally against both national and local policy. So why are the builders already there? Clearly this is a done deal between developers and politicians, so whatever is said here is fundamentally pointless, but at least the applicant should, in the future, be congratulated for developing a stinking eyesore and future environmental disaster for the whole world to see when visiting Cambridge – where they could well be forced to drink bottled water. The destruction of the historic city continues, and this application is just another part of it.