I HAVE an old memory of being with a group of friends and playing on the railway track which carried the coal trains to Cockenzie Power Station.
We’d climbed the embankment and were exploring. We shouldn’t have been there, of course, and I can’t remember how my friends and I gained access, or exactly when it was, but it would have been the early 1970s.
But a vivid memory I do have is of my friends and I being chased away by a staff member who wasn’t quick enough to catch us. My home was literally a stone’s throw away and I was fearful I may have been seen by my parents or that they would discover my misdemeanour. But according to my memory, there were no repercussions.
I often reflect on just how much the landscape around Prestonpans and Cockenzie has changed since those days. The house we lived in and the church my father served are now long gone, with an access road to ‘new’ housing taking their place. The fields and meadows which were my childhood playground are now mostly built over and new developments seem to be a constant and ongoing process. Urban sprawl is all around.
But another change has been the decommissioning and demolition of Cockenzie Power Station and many related facilities. That was one of the last big events in the ending of old industries in the area.
There is always a sadness at the passing of an era, and I too felt the absence of features such as the chimneys, as I’d grown up under their shadow.
But I’d also grown up with the pollution they’d caused, seen and unseen. So my nostalgia soon gave way to excitement at the possibility of a healthier, safer and greener landscape.
There is much talk now of making these old sites ‘developable’ with new funding from the UK’s Levelling Up fund. The planning application includes removing the bunds, which are large embankments which enclosed the open coal store.
But the fact is the bunds have already been ‘developable’ for quite a while, although this development hasn’t been driven by local authority planning or profit. Nature has found a way to make the bunds ‘developable’ in its own way, with wild seeded woodland making a habitat for a rich variety of birds and other wildlife.
A roe deer at the bunds. Image: Bryan Hickman
There has been little consultation of the local community, let alone involvement, in the decision to remove the bunds and use the waste to infill the Cockenzie Power Station site.
The potential health hazards of that removal are also an issue. So a group of locals are petitioning the council to reverse their decision on this.
I know most folk in East Lothian might not know the bunds area, but part of it has become a small, yet important, slice of nature and wildlife in an area that is seeing a massive expansion of human-led developments. We live in one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world and the nature depletion in the western part of our county is particularly severe.
This little sliver of rewilded nature is a small and precious miracle. Having a haven for wildlife on our doorstep is more, not less, essential in this nature-depleted world. The plan to remove it is a microcosm of a global issue: of the needless destruction of habitats and the depletion of nature in the name of ‘development’.
Paper commitments to climate action and reversing the decline in biodiversity are just words if a small, but precious and saveable, part of the natural world such as this is needlessly destroyed.
The good news is it’s not too late to save it, if enough people sign the petition.
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