Farmers slam 'crazy' plans to flood 1,500 acres to save fish from a power plant

SWNS

Farmers and locals say their 'lives will be destroyed' by 'crazy' plans to flood 1,500 acres - to compensate for fish lost to a nuclear power plant.  EDF Energy wants the land - much of it used for agriculture and businesses like camping and tourism - to create a saltmarsh habitat.  Hinkley Point C is currently being built and will ingest 44 tonnes of fish a year - and EDF wants to mitigate that loss and the wider environmental impact of the site.  It wants to compensate the death of the fish and its carbon footprint by creating the saltmarsh at one of four sites along the River Severn in Somerset.  Plans are currently focused on Kingston Seymour,  between Clevedon and Weston-super-Mare, where landowners have received letters and documents from EDF.  Andrew Cockcroft, Head of Stakeholder Relations at Hinkley Point C, said: “We have listened carefully to concerns and suggestions made during our consultation and are now exploring changes to our proposals.   “Hinkley Point C is one of Britain’s biggest acts in the fight against climate change and its operation will provide significant benefits for the environment.   “The development of saltmarsh habitat will boost this further - helping support fish populations and minimise the small environmental impact of operating the new power station.”  For action group’s petition visit: https://www.change.org/p/stop-hinkley-point-c-edf-proposal-to-flood-part-of-kingston-seymour-for-salt-marsh.

Transcript

00:00My name is Pete. Pete's a Rolland Stuckey. My name's Karen Stuckey. We're both semi-retired

00:06but we do have a business here. We have two residential tenants here, families. One has

00:12been with us for almost 20 years. What used to be the farm and the farm buildings is now commercial

00:20units and storage, so we have people working over there. We still have some land and the land that

00:28we do have is still farmed. Well the first thing was when we got this tree through the letterbox.

00:36After that we decided that we should get the landowners together and we called a meeting

00:43which we held within the week actually. Our first meeting was pretty well 100%

00:53attended. Within a couple of days of that, I don't know if the ADF have heard of it, that they

00:59knocked on the door. Mainly I talked to them to see if I could get any information

01:03from what they were doing and they weren't letting on anything at all. I said we had our own meeting

01:11and we decided, we voted, that we weren't going to let you on any of our lands. The guys said well

01:20can you give us a list of the questions to prepare for the meeting up here and I said no.

01:27Can we enter your land to do a survey and I said no.

01:31And yet they still continue to come out, take pictures, take videos.

01:38I moved here in July and then this whole salt marsh stuff kicked off which was a bit of a shock

01:46because obviously in 2011-2012 we kind of saw off the previous attempt to create a salt marsh here.

01:55This is the map. This is the third map that we've seen and as you can see it's a huge area here

02:03and all along here, you know, it's a huge amount of land that is currently being farmed and lived

02:09on and has loads of businesses and homes on it. So yeah it's a real concern for us.

02:16We're the people that live along the seawall and we know the risk. People who've lived here

02:21for years, they know exactly, you know, when it's high tide, you know, there is a concern. So it's a

02:28huge thing to try and talk about bringing the sea closer or, you know, taking down the seawall when,

02:35you know, you can't do that in this area as a reality. We've got, you know, very rare wildlife

02:42such as lapwings and lulls and great crested newts. We've got lots of animals who are protected

02:49so to destroy that, to create a salt marsh, you know, I'm sure natural England will not be,

02:55would not support that. The other thing is that, you know, farm security, you know, food security.

03:03We've currently got very productive dairy farms, cattle farms. The North Somerset levels are older

03:09than the Somerset levels. So everyone talks about the Somerset levels and how old they are but this

03:14is actually more, more ancient and more unspoiled to be a really valuable area and to think that

03:22you'd turn that into a salt marsh or that you'd ruin it in that way is, it's kind of almost,

03:32yeah, it's almost shocking really.

03:34This is our home. And our business. And our business. It was a family farm originally and

03:39we're losing a bit piece by piece. It isn't the money that will get me out of here

03:45but if they start building a sea defence around me, I think. I don't see how we could. Then I would

03:51have, we would have to go. We're now 71 and 68. I've had a diagnosis of early Alzheimer's so my

03:59diagnosis of early Alzheimer's so my thought processes don't work quite as well as they did

04:05and I have trouble remembering things so I don't deal with stress well. You know, there's two

04:10sorts of people in life. People who kind of sit there and complain and then there's people who

04:14do something about it. You're fighting for, for everyone in the village. There is a great

04:19community here and you're also fighting for people who are just very, very directly impacted

04:27by this and it's devastating because it's really taken away their future. You know,

04:32it's a difficult fight because it's, in a sense, it's David and Goliath, isn't it?

04:38You know, you're fighting a sort of corporation and you're fighting a situation that's really

04:45unfair but you have to do what you can do and fight as hard as you can.

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