Wednesday 10 September 2008

China Gateway update

After two helpful and constructive conversations with Richard Samuel, he agreed to have the statutory consultees documents published on the UKPlaning website and they are appearing there as I write. Many thanks to him for his cooperation in this matter that exceeds the legal requirements imposed on the council.

To view the documents copy the planning reference TH/08/0400 click here to go to the planning site and paste the reference into the application number search box and click the search button.

I envisage that these documents will be very helpful to those wishing to understand the environmental implications of the proposed development.

7 comments:

  1. Well done, Michael!

    One has to ask why Brian White at TDC went on record to say this development posed no threat to the aquifer, when clearly Southern Water and The EA talk of maintaining hydrocarbon interceptors and managing drainage flows off vehicle hard standing areas in PERPETUITY! We still appear to have the farce of the X types and A types with 239 HGV bays at the most sensitive end of the site and posing the greatest risk to the aquifer. Will these hardstanding areas be connected to foul sewerage as required?

    KCC's report seems to regard this as an overdeveloped plan for Phase 1 and thoroughly out of keeping with the area and development so far. The problem about CGPs Plan is that they are forced to squeeze everything into their owned land whilst TDC and KCC play silly buggars as EKO LLP on this site. If it makes sense to develop MIBP properly then 'EKO LLP' (aka TDC and KCC)should assist CGP to make the best possible use of this site!

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  2. Live debate tonight, Wednesday, BBC SE News. Steve Ladyman and Norman Thomas at the China Gateway site.

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  3. How can Norman Thomas be lively. He needs to return to wales to get back to all the other welsh winghers

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  4. Have been looking at those extra documents, Michael.Your perseverance has been amply rewarded.

    Has anyone else picked up the fact that TDC Planning and Council Officers will have to be crawling all over this development for years to come to:
    1. ensure all conditions are met in construction phases and thereafter to ensure that no contamination of the aquifer occurs. (The problem here, fellow council tax payers, is that TDC as the Planning Authority has a 'duty of care' in respect of the aquifer and cannot derrogate this responsibility)
    2. A TDC Officer is going to have to monitor the 'pie in the sky' Transport Plan for each and every user of the site or it will be quietly forgotten?

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  5. Well done indeed. Once again I feel justified in describing you as a star of Thanet. Your strength of perseverance is amazing.

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  6. I think the main problem here is that the interceptors can’t run straight into soakaways, but would have to go into balancing ponds and as the lorry park and associated warehouses are at the wrong end of the site there is no down hill path to where balancing ponds could be placed.

    We are looking at plans that just don’t make sense, frankly it is very difficult as an engineer to look at a design that doesn’t conform to the laws of nature, in this case gravity, and comment on it constructively.

    I am totally mystified as to why the plans should have come before planning when the surface drainage design obviously can’t conform to the discharge restrictions, has anyone got any ideas on this one?

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  7. Michael, go back and ask that nice Mr Brown how it is intended to work? EA and Southern Water seem to state that flow off hardstanding on SPZ 1 (where 100+ HGV bays are shown around the X types)MUST be into foul sewer. The problem with getting this wrong is an event like 28 May will drop 20mm on to the hardstanding areas around the X types and A types and their 300 HGV bays in 20 mins. Any flow exceeding the capacity of drains will automatically flow down the slope into SPZ 1 with all its contaminants off the parking bays. Madness!

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Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.