Campaign video by those fighting the Trelion solar park plan

Campaign video by those fighting the Trelion solar park plan.

Transcript

00:00Mid Cornwall is being dumped on again. An unspoilt farmland at the edge of the clay

00:20area. French company EDF is planning yet another massive solar development.

00:26So what we have here is a landscape that you can see is scarred by clay mining over 200

00:36years. Everyone here has lived with the kind of degradations that the clay mining industry

00:44has brought to this area, but of course it has also brought jobs, but there definitely

00:50has been a price to pay in terms of this countryside.

00:56Listen, you just can't give us that tag. We have eight solar parks in this area and no objections were made to those,

01:08but this huge new application from French company EDF for 200 acres of fertile

01:16farmland, beautiful green farmland, takes us over the edge.

01:20This Trillion site will be four times the size of any of the other individual sites,

01:30twice the size of St Stephen's Village. There is a solar park gold rush going on here and this

01:38clay country community is being asked, just asked to take too much. In an area just four miles by

01:45four miles square, we have significant solar development already and we're now being asked

01:51to accept another 200 acres. It can't all be placed on the actually what is one of the most deprived

01:58parts of Cornwall. A tenant farmer is being evicted, the contribution that his family make

02:05to the local economy will be lost. And the really shocking thing is that the proposed Trillion site

02:12on the ridge of a hill will by EDF's own assessment be visible from a staggering 80%

02:19of St Stephen's Parish. What people will see as they look across the landscape

02:26is behind them the clay waste and in front of them a sea of black glass.

02:31Cornwall Council has policies about cumulative impact to protect areas from step-by-step

02:39development and degradation of their environment and we know that

02:46councils will be nervous about turning down any solar applications because the pressure from the

02:50government to up the amount of renewables in the country. But they must have the courage to stand

02:57by plans that they have made for Cornwall's benefit. And if this is not cumulative impact,

03:08I don't know what is.