Letters, June 7, 2023

Wrong site

I’M opposed to the location of the Birdwood solar station.

This is not a proposed farm, it is a solar station or solar plant.

At Birdwood we farm sheep, cows, grapes, apples, pears, flowers and other crops.

Can we please stop referring to it as a farm? It will replace what we once knew as farmland.

The Adelaide Hills Council is so out of touch with what the majority of our community and beyond wants.

Hundreds of people are totally opposed to the site on which this solar station will be built. This site is on the doorstep of Birdwood, the Torrens Valley scenic route and prime farming land.

The council will not allow the building of houses on this land, so why allow such an industrial eyesore at the gateway to our historic town?

It is very disappointing that it took a group of locals and supporters to have to take this matter to the ERD court in an attempt to improve the visual impact that this solar station will have on our environment.

Not only did the group improve the visual impact, but they have ensured that it be maintained with the proper care that would be required for the vegetation to survive and grow.

Surely these are matters that the council should have enforced in their own planning regulations.

Unfortunately they were not put in place, instead requiring the residents to outlay their own time and money in an endeavor to help improve the impact that this solar station will have on our community.

We, as a community, had hoped to prevent the building of this solar station going ahead. Unfortunately the council would not listen.

The group should, however, be proud that they have been able to make an improvement to the visual impact of this development.

Adam Levy, Birdwood

Lost faith

UNTIL recently I believed that there were both trustworthy and untrustworthy politicians on either side of our State Government.

I, perhaps naively, believed that there were some who followed their conscience before succumbing to their party lines. I was wrong.

I now view every Labor and Liberal State politician as absolutely despicable.

In voting for the suppressive new anti-protest rules, they have unanimously agreed to degrade democracy – the very system that put them where they are.

They have also revealed themselves as being not very clever.

There are many ways by which they could have achieved their ends without alienating their support bases and constituents. And now, having blundered into a mire of condemnation, they don’t seem to have enough integrity to review their hasty and unseemly act of dangerous foolishness.

Colin Rogers, Meadows

Judge not

RESPONDING to “Even handed” (The Courier, May 24), Lisa Daintree is correct, all animals deserve love, care and respect and no animal should be treated as vermin or classed as a pest.

One of our worst cases of appalling discrimination for animals is encasing pigs in sow stalls, on cold concrete floors, so small that they cannot move more than a step forward or a step backward and cannot turn around.

Pet dogs, however, treated to this kind of torture would come under the Animal Welfare Act and those causing the suffering would be prosecuted and handed fines of up to $50,000 and years in jail. Although intelligence is not a deciding factor, as pain and misery are even more important, pigs are just as intelligent as dogs.

Discriminating between animals which are indigenous and those which are an introduced species is also despicable and unacceptable.

We are not indigenous either, so should we be discriminated against as well, and eradicated?

I consider that we, as a humans, have a long way to go before we’re in a position to judge other creatures and have the right to persecute and kill them.

Let us judge ourselves and amend our own cruel and sickening ways before we judge other species and attack them.

Christine Pierson, C.A.T.S. Cats Assistance To Sterilise

Fix Hahndorf

MY husband and I live in Hahndorf, in our beautiful Hills.

We are reaching out to the readers of The Courier, both online and in print form, not to sit back and do nothing in regard to heavy vehicle traffic still allowed to move through this village.

The Hahndorf Community Association is doing all it can, but it needs our voices as well.

How can we sleep at night if we do nothing and leave this issue unresolved?

This issue is one that needs to remain on the agenda and a solution achieved, not the continual roundabout of discussions which are taking place with no destination.

We know the Premier is aware of the Jacobs report (the latest one to be made available under the Freedom of Information Act).

It says that it makes no sense to have the main street of Hahndorf (Mt Barker Road) as a heavy vehicle corridor.

It also says the upgrade of the interchange at Verdun does not solve this problem.  

We have very skilled and talented people in SA who have expertise in this space and if there are reports and recommendations, which cost thousands, if not millions of dollars, why aren’t they taken seriously?

It seems to me that political intervention must have taken the place of common sense.

Our village is not divided on this issue.

We are united in the desire to have a solution and the Premier, Peter Malinauskas, is doing us a disservice by continuing to make this comment.

All consultation processes have shown overwhelming support by residents.

People of the Adelaide Hills: this problem will not go away.

I urge you, the readers of The Courier, to continue to raise this issue until we get a satisfactory result.

Please write to the people and bodies who resonate with you and let’s get an outcome that speaks to our hearts, not to any political agenda.

Please write or at least ring to have your voice heard on this issue.

It’s common sense.

Sharon and Angelo Pippos, Hahndorf