Page 3308 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 18 September 2013
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115 metres from my front door, directly across the road. Our home was designed to overlook the area where the solar farm is proposed. Losing the view is one thing but approving something that will devalue someone’s home is just wrong. It is absolutely unfair. Not having consultation with the affected community as a key part of the solar auction submission is absolutely appalling and shows a complete lack of empathy towards the people affected by this.
A key saying in real estate is “your house is worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it.” It is common sense, why would anyone looking for a rural outlook in the country buy a house like mine that overlooks an industrial site that is surrounded by high security fencing? Even screening will not take it away. This is what is keeping me awake at night. This is the livelihood of the hard working people in our village, this is my livelihood, and our opinions don’t seem to matter to the decision makers. This is a real possibility that my home will be worth less than what it is mortgaged for, this is financial ruin for us. This will also bring down the values of homes across the village whether they overlook the site or not.
Again, from another piece of correspondence that my office has recently received from residents:
I am a resident of Uriarra Village and like most residents bought into the estate on the back of advertising and marketing by the ACT Govt, in conjunction with the developers, of a rural lifestyle, ambience and sense of community.
I invested my life savings, heart and soul into my property as well as adhered to the very stringent leasing and development rules, which the ACT Govt helped draft, to ensure the village retained its rural look and feel.
You can only imagine my shock and outrage when I then heard of plans to locate an industrial solar plant across the road from my village. It is not that I am opposed to alternative forms of power, such as solar; it is just that I don’t want it located 50 metres from our village. Nowhere else in the world, to my research, is a solar plant of this size located so close to residential houses.
I feel completely betrayed by the ACT Govt and in particular, Katy Gallagher and Simon Corbell, who partly sold me this dream, only to destroy it in less than two years of living here. My disgust with this decision is only exacerbated by the fact that Katy Gallagher attended our community naming day and spoke of how she was so proud to be involved in this project and to ensure that the rural lifestyle of the village was able to be maintained after the devastating fires of 2003. Clearly her pride waned quickly!
Again, another resident has written to me:
We purchased the first of the private lots at Uriarra Village. We are a Canberra family with a long association at Uriarra Village going back 35 years. Being the first to purchase, we realised the inherent risks of putting all our life savings and effort into an unknown future. Whilst the rural beauty of Uriarra Valley and the backdrop of the Brindabella Mountains is a place where we could build our dream home and enjoy the rural lifestyle into old age, we were also concerned that the village itself would grow and prosper along similar lines. We researched heavily the guidelines pertaining to the re-development of the village and the
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