Sunday Ramble Thanet’s water supply, Pleasurama and the Environment Agency

An interesting presentation from the Environment Agency on Thanet’s water supply, I have done my best to publish it on the web, it didn’t convert easily from the file format it came in.

I recommend that you copy it if you want to be able to access it in the future as I am not certain that I am strictly allowed to publish it for copyright reasons so may have to remove it.

It is interesting as much for what it does mention as what it doesn’t, the links down the side take you to the various pages.

I was surprised that it doesn’t appear on the council website, well maybe not so surprised as the council seem quite happy to ignore EA recommendations for Pleasurama.

I was wondering if the cabinet decided to continue with the Pleasurama development because council officers gave them the wrong advice.

This is a quote from a council officer in a Your Thanet article:

“The letter from the EA states that, although standards have changed, they are not requesting a flood risk assessment.”

This is a quote from the environment agency letter:

“we would highly recommend that a full FRA is undertaken which could inform appropriate resilience and resistance measures. The assessment could also inform the production of a suitable flood warning and evacuation plan, for both the residential and commercial parts of the development.”

It does beg the question if a council officer is prepared to be economical with the truth over environmental safety issues with the press, how much confidence should we put in their assurances.

I notice Simon Moores is calling for more incisive and accurate journalism locally on his blog and too find my self tempted to criticise the local press for not waving the letter under the officers nose and asking her to interpret it.

The trouble is that I know in many cases they are between a rock and a hard place with many local issues, firstly they don’t have the resources that local papers used to have and secondly there are many restrictions placed on who they can ask what and thirdly the council and local businesses involved in local issues are a source of advertising revenue.

As I write there is a interview with some ordinary Chinese people on the television about pollution in China in the middle of the interview the a communist party representative turned up and stopped the interview.

It is very hard to have much confidence in government at the moment, the latest byword being redacted.

I do wonder where we are going with government in this country, because of the first past the post system anyone wishing to stand for election and get anywhere at all has to join one of our tired old parties now proven to be much more corrupt than we previously thought.

There is something saddening about Gordon Brown promising reform and then the government publishing the redacted expenses documents, it certainly points The Daily Telegraph with the clean documents to where to look.