A Cobargo woman has vowed to not give up in her battle to stop a proposed multi-million-dollar solar farm from being built across the road.
Public submissions for the almost $10-million DA lodged by Portugal based EDP Renewables for a site on the village’s southern end close on Monday.
Under the plan over ten-and-half-thousand solar panels would be erected 2-point-6 metres high.
Mel Britton said the company has made several attempts, as late as in the last few weeks, to buy her support.
“I didn’t even ring them for the offer. I’m not selling. Like, they’ll drag me out of here in a box. I’m not going to give in to these multimillion dollar companies,” Mrs Britton said.
“I’m not against solar, but when this DA will not power Cobargo in an outage, it’s not doing anything for our town. They can either move it somewhere else where it doesn’t affect 42 homes. You know, there’s plenty of space down here. But the Bega Valley is agricultural and grazing land. Food and fibre is what we grow down here, not not solar,” she said.
Mrs Britton thinks the solar panels should not be allowed to go near homes in the town,” Mrs Britton said
“I think it’s a very inappropriate site because it actually affects quite a lot of people in Cobargo,” she said.
“Just on our road, there’s like, six lifestyle properties, that we’ve all chosen to leave the city, for one reason or another, and move to the Bega Valley, and to outlook is always beautiful hills and lovely scenery.
“We didn’t pay off a mortgage for 20 years to sit and look at a solar farm for the rest of our lives.”
Mrs Britton also criticised the small amount of time given to the community to lodge a submission against a controversial proposed solar farm in the town.
She said it’s not really possible to research it all and prepare a response in just a few weeks.
“It’s a 78 page. DA, like, I don’t eat dictionaries for breakfast. I have to use Google to Google words in it because they, it’s just beyond me,” Mrs Britton said.
“You know. It’s been so frustrating and challenging to sort of work out what you’re reading, what it means and how a lot of the things in there I don’t find that are correct,” she said.
She said it’s a struggle to figure out what to write and is living in fear of the development being approved.
“That’s what’s keeping me awake every night, I, I, I go to bed at like 10 o’clock at night and I’m laying there until 1 or 2 in the morning thinking, what am I going to write against this?
“you’ve just got words and that, you know? In your head that you, you just think, what does this mean? You know? How do I fight against it? And then you sort of roll over and you think, oh god, what if it goes ahead? It’s going to be terrible. It’s really, really challenging. Really challenging and I’m sure it’s a ploy that these companies do. You know, to every application that they put in. You know, it, they just try to wind down the, the little man.”
