I went to Monkton nature reserve the other day where some of the volunteers there were expressing concern about Thanet Earth, you have to appreciate here that the nature reserve is in a disused chalk pit and that there is now a huge mountain of chalk towering above it, on which the massive greenhouses will eventually be built.It seemed pretty obvious that many of the people in the vicinity of Thanet Earth had no idea of the colossal scale of this structure, especially in terms of the height of the earth works, it would seem that local consultation was abysmally inadequate.
One thing I noticed that made me chuckle, was the stupid comments by the supporters of Thanet Earth to the effect that much less of our underground water supply would consumed, because the water from its roofs would be used to irrigate the crops inside. What they failed to notice was that as the thing is on top of the drinking water reservoir, the water landing on the roofs would previously have soaked though the ground and into the reservoir.
Well spotted, I think part of the main road was recently flooded in that area due to work, and as you say their effectively putting a barrier on rain soaking into our local water reserves, and of course the same thing will occur with China Gate if they don't contaminate the local water supply, they too will cause big problems as rain that would presumably have soaked away will now be flushed into the sea via the mains.
ReplyDeleteStill mustn't grumble,
ReplyDeleteTony I think the main problem with both projects is one of scale relative to the size of Thanet, from the plans it’s very difficult for people to realise just how huge the projects are. The people around Thanet Earth are just waking up to this and as far as I can see China Gateway looks to be much bigger, my understanding is that the developer is already trying to acquire land for phases 4 and 5 which would take it int Quex Park.
ReplyDeleteOh dear , you whinging old gits
ReplyDeleteso says a councillor last comment - lets hope you are in a minority
ReplyDeleteJust because folk try to make people stop and think about the implcations of something doesn't make them 'whingers'. It makes them realists, sensible and 'for God's sake, don't complain to me. After all I warned you but you walked blindly into it' people.
ReplyDeleteI think some of our councillors are walking into all this blinkered and even when advised/warned/informed still follow the 'it's going to create jobs for our locals unemployed' line. I e-mailed one of my Tory councillors with concerns over the water etc in connection with China Gateway. His reply to me? 'I have concerns about all this' Someone who e-mailed three days later was told,'I support this scheme because it will create jobs'. What/who changed his mind, I wonder?
With Thanet Earth as far as I can see there is no way back, like it or not the prime agricultural land has gone forever and it would appear that some miscalculations were made about the way this would effect land drainage and flooding.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I can make out no environmental study or flood risk assessment was carried out before work started, so no one has any idea what the flooding will be like this winter. I find this very strange as it is right next to a nature reserve, which presumably once they start to pump out the over sixty thousand square meters a year of irrigation water they say the will from under it will dry up and die.
If you click on the label below you can see my previous post about this where I raise some of the comments made by local farmers.
With China Gateway the plans just don’t work from a surface drainage point of view, no one I have spoken to has come up with any solution to this other than completely changing the layout of the entire site.
So the real question here is will the plans have been modified to conform with the Southern Water discharge conditions before they come to full council? If not our councillors are being asked to approve something that couldn’t be built, which raises some unusual questions
in hindsight, we were all blinded by the product.
ReplyDeleteFruit and veg aren't as sinister other developments in the area, so everyones eye was taken off the detail.
The idea is good, ist just the wrong location. Industry should be built on brownfield sites. Thanet earth should have gone on top of the runway.