Thunder on the A14 Bridge, north of Cambridge, over the sharp dams on the side of the road covered with plastic ships containing dried trees.
Sometimes, the arid scene is permeated by a flash of green where a young boat or a honeymoon appeared apparently against the possibilities, but the shock of their lives is an exception in the pure landscape.
The new road, which is 21 miles long, cost Cambridge and Hintengdon 1.5 billion pounds and opened in 2020 to achieve a familiar political desire: growth. One of the largest infrastructure projects in Britain in the past decade, was approved by the Minister of Foreign Affairs for the heads of local elected advisers.
The national highways, the government -owned company that builds and maintains Britain A. The net profit of the biological diversity of the construction project will be 11.5 %; In other words, they pledged that the natural environment would be left in a much better condition after building the road before.
But five years after the opening of the A14, the evidence is otherwise, and the national highways recognized the biological diversity and left the environment in a worse case as a result of the road project.
Empty plastic trees running for a mile after a mile along the new road, a testimony on the comprehensive template of most trees of 860,000 trees planted to dilute for the effect of the road. Weeds are dried as a safe way for animals such as News and water water and drying them, while the basins designed to collect rain water and provide wildlife habitats are suffocated by mud and silt.
With fears that Environmental protection declining In the draft planning and infrastructure law in the Labor Party, the developers will make it easier to destroy nature, Edna Murphy, a liberal democracy in the Cambridgershire Province Council, to the deputies of the Environmental Auditing Committee to investigate the failure of a population of billions of billions of the A14 project.
Murphy said: “The national highways resisted the attempts of local actors to discover what it reaches,” Murphy said.
“We have struggled over the years to find out the basic facts about the death of almost 860,000 trees that were originally planted and what happened later in terms of planting.
“How can they be allowed to stay away from this? How can anyone trust promises about environmental mitigation in any national infrastructure projects in the future?”
Murphy and her colleague at Lib Dem Ros Hathorn believe that the failure of the environmental improvements created in the mitigation for the A14 is a horrific example of the strength of developers in environmental pledges to obtain planning permit, which is not supported after that.
They started asking questions on national highways in 2021 when it became clear from the scale of the tree dies that there is something wrong. They requested details about the number of trees planted, the number of the number of died, and the regular reports on the cultivation of trees.
Slices in 2022 referred to Murphy and Hatorn that 70 % of 860,000 trees were originally planted.
In late 2023, Martin Edwards, Director of the National Roads Project, He suggested to local advisers Death may be only 50 %. He said that two storage operations had occurred since death, and both of them later failed. This policy was blamed for the cultivation of the same tree in the same place, “and your fingers remain conclusive.”
Edwards insisted that the lessons were learned and that the national highways in 2023 had a full survey of soil and tree analysis for a period of three months.
He said that this revealed that they planted the wrong species in the wrong place, and presented valuable lessons around the most appropriate season of the year to grow a tree.
Nicole Golan, the main environment scientist in Arbtech, said that she was surprised by this approach: “The cultivation of trees on this range should have been supported through the due ecosystem, including soil samples, and long -length monitoring of long monitoring of long monitoring.
A third of 165,000 trees-at a estimated cost of 2.9 million pounds-during the fall and winter from 2023-2024. National highways promised to share the details of their polls and a new planning plan with the Cambridgeshire Council.
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But in a report in this June, the council officers said that the information was not transferred to them despite the repeated requests.
The officers said: “The documents that were provided to the group were basic general looks and did not contain the required detailed information.” “Therefore, the council did not have evidence of where and why agriculture failed, which would be decisive to inform the cultivation strategy, ensuring improving the success of agriculture.”
Today, parts of the A14 are still as the trees must thrive the desert, and the place of the new 16,000 trees is still a mystery.
The officials said, “The council does not know the place of its cultivation,” adding that the officers were driving along the way to try to find them, but they only found some limited areas where the restoration of the cultivation had occurred.
Some residents began to grow their seedlings. Vhari Russell of Bramptun said it has grown different trees in its garden in the pots and planted all of them in the A14 dam. “I think we may have put in 150,” she told local reporters.
The national highways, which it reprimanded by the Roads and Railways Office for its failure to fulfill a major scale in biological diversity, has admitted that the A14 project has left nature worse despite its pledge to improve it.
in Evaluation report National highways said that the effects of biological diversity were “worse than expected”, as well as the effects on Water environment. National highways did not face any punishment for these failures.
From 2026, the profit of net biological diversity will be mandatory for large infrastructure like A14. But Becky Bollingger, head of the land administration of wildlife funds, said that developers should be held at his account as soon as the mandate arrived, so that the habitats that were re -created had an opportunity to fight to survive. A recent report showed This is only a third One of the environmental improvements promised by home builders.
Polager said that the example of A14 showed how important it is to avoid damage to wildlife in the first place, which reduces the need to cultivate compensation.
“The failures highlight the challenges of trying to re -establish mature habitats: it takes years, if not contracts, that the seedlings turn into a forest and provide spaces that are intensified for wildlife [affected] Through development, “she said.
“We bear our responsibility towards the environment seriously. The A14 upgrade project was not limited to improving the road; our continuous environmental work is still a long-term project we will continue to monitor and support between October 2023 and the April 2024-optimal agriculture season -165,000 TRRES and Shrubs assembled. 90 % of these trees have survived.
