This is another one of those crazy “only in Thanet” situations that makes you wonder what the council is doing. Why there has been no publicity about this from Thanet District Council, no press release nothing on their website it beggars belief.The first I heard about this was on Dave Green’s blog, see http://eastclifframsgate.blogspot.com/2011/01/manston-discharge-consent.html
Anyway if you want to discuss draining the Manston runways into Pegwell Bay with the environment agency then it’s tomorrow Jan 20th from 10am until 4pm at 161-165 High Street Ramsgate.
This is an old problem about what goes down the drain, here in Thanet back when Manston first started being an airfield during WW1 all the drains either lead to soakaways into the ground .
Manston Airport is on top of Thanet’s underground drinking water reservoir so at different times in the airport’s history efforts have been made to divert the drainage away from our water supply.
Because of the very large areas of concrete at the airport, when we a large amount of rain there is too much water going down the drains at the airport for the local sewage system to cope with,
Over the last 90 years or so as Manston developed there has been a steady movement away from draining into the ground there towards piping the water runoff into the sea at Pegwell Bay.
This was fine until Pegwell Bay was designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest, here is the information about this http://www.english-nature.org.uk/citation/citation_photo/1001128.pdf affter this happened there has been an ongoing attempt to get various airport operators to get a discharge consent.
Michael
ReplyDeleteThis has come up before but with the IT systems recovering from today's fire I can't check and as a consequence can't be assured of factual accuracy.
However, I do know that this involves a planning application from the airport and that such an application requires proper consent, involving approved environmental controls before it can proceed. I believe that such permission would have to come from the environment agency and not the council and so there's no reason, I suspect for immediate concern.
In any event, rest assured that I'm looking at it and there's more to it than meets the eye!
Sorry Simon I don’t think I made myself clear as I am tied up with other things today, what I am astounded about is the lack of publicity relating to the EAs drop in session, that is assuming that you feel that pollution control of Pegwell Bay is something that local people would be interested in.
ReplyDeletePresumably TDC must have known that the EA was having this session in Thanet so why on earth didn’t they publicise it?
Simon, TDC and its IT deppartment leave a lot of things to be desired. Most things of interest are buried or never appear.
ReplyDeleteThe Environment Agency isn't a planning authority and they don't give planning permission for anything. They have certain rights to build and construct without planning permission but these rights aren't relevant to this application. They have to be consulted and they have to ensure that any application will comply with the relevant legislation, but it is the Council's responsibility to grant (or refuse) the planning permission.
ReplyDeleteDon I think much of the problem with the people behind the TDC and many other government websites, is that they just don’t appreciate the difficulties for people who have to use them as their main source of gaining information.
ReplyDeleteMost of them are happy to, and get paid for chatting to you for hours if necessary and are inclined to shy away from writing anything down.
18.50 this is about a discharge consent, not a planning application, I don’t believe most of the airport has planning consent as it was MOD.