Starting with the old Thanet pictures, today I wandered down
to the local section in my bookshop and copied some from the secondhand local
books on the shelf, so anything you recognise lads and lasses.
The two Thanet aircraft pictures bring us on to the Manston
update.
I think my main problem here is that it is difficult to
understand some of the issues and the group of people who are for aviation use
at the Manston Airport site are good at arguing with the group of people who
are against it and vice versa. But no one seems to very good at explaining
possible outcomes if the DCO and associated CPO do go though and we get a huge
airfreight hub built at Manston.
They say we live in a compensation culture, but the freight
hub compensation culture is something that I really don’t understand at all.
At the moment there seems to be a door knocking exercise
going on in Thanet asking people there for various personal and property details,
I think this is about assessing the compensation either if RiverOak/RSP want to
take away your property by CPO or if the freight hub will make some sort of
difference to your quality of life.
What is difficult to find out at the moment is if you say
live in an old building in Ramsgate that would be expensive to insulate against
aircraft noise, would you get enough compensation? Added to this is the issue
of the listed building and the conservation area and what you would be allowed
to do.
The other aspect of the airfreight hub is best summed up as
don’t by a diesel car, and this is because the save the planet thinking has
changed since Manston Airport closed.
I am assuming that everyone here has heard of climate
change, the thinking here is that using too much of the fossil fuels will
eventually damage planet earth to the point it becomes very difficult to human
beings to survive on it. The temperature will rise making holidays here in
Thanet more desirable in fifty years time, after this in say three hundred
years time comes the hangover after the big party.
The diesel car and jet aeroplane issue is also about burning
fossil fuel but not about climate change. In the simplest terms the government
is saying that if you live next to a busy road junction you are much more
likely to die younger, probably from lung cancer because of breathing in the
little particles given off by burning diesel fuel.
One such area in Thanet is St Lawrence Roundabout which is
now designated an air quality management area, there is lots of bumph online
but I think it boils down to if you live near it you are 36% more likely to die
of lung cancer than if you don’t. it is always comforting to know that any
reduction in your life expectancy is now being properly managed by the council.
So just for a mo considering that about half the cars using
it are likely to be diesels and taking into account how much a diesel car does
in terms of mpg, how long do you reckon it would take for a gallon of diesel to
be burnt there?
Perhaps a couple of gallons a day, don’t know really so I
suppose it would take about 100 days to burn a tonne of diesel at this
junction, or perhaps 4 tonnes a year. This sounds reasonable to me give or take
a few 100%, in this context it doesn’t really matter if it is 1 or 100 per
year. What does matter is that the scientists have told the government that it
will kill people off sufficiently to cause a scandal and so they are looking at
ways to phase out diesel cars.
The other main sources of the deadly particles are jet
engine fuel and the bunker oil used in ships, both of these are worse than diesel
cars in terms of the amount of particles given of for the weight of fuel burnt,
although filtering them out is easier with ships.
Now the proposed freight hub at Manston involves an minimum
of 10,000 ground movements per year, landing or takeoff and a freight cargo
plane 747 type burns I tonne of jet fuel per ground movement. So the freight hub would
have to burn 10,000 tonnes of fuel at Manston per year to qualify for a DCO.
Anyway no answers so far so please regardless of your
position on Manston, if you have any ideas on this one let me know.
Maidstone however was about as busy as Ramsgate used to be
in the 1970s, so is this partly because KCC is West Kent focused?
Hi Michael,
ReplyDeleteNo one from Save Manston is knocking on anyones doors asking for information re property and personal details. As you rightly point out and from the link supplied this is being carried out by an independent firm commissioned by RiverOak Strategic Partners and to the requirements of the application for the DCO. I think this maybe getting mixed up with the leaflet being distributed to households through Thanet and the villages by SMAa updating people on the progress of the DCO and about the new company RiverOak Strategic Partners. This was to correct a lot of miss-information being circulted by people with an opposing view to opening the airfield. Hope this helps.
Terry this does rather leave the problem of who is likely to turn up on your doorstep asking questions that may be related to compensation to cover the cost of insulation your house.
ReplyDeleteThe other issue is the reduction in life expectancy related to burning 10,000 tonnes of jet fuel upwind of a lot of the Thanet residents, I was discussing this with RiverOaks environmental experts but they seem to have been dropped from the team on the RSP website.
I think once we know roughly the level of particulates in the plume from Manston we would have some idea of the problem, my back of the packet calculation, which no one has disputed looks like about 3,000 people here die early if they build the freight hub.
Of course I am probably wrong but it would be reassuring if someone would tell where my mistake is.
Michael, the two aircraft pictures have really foxed me as to where they were taken! I can see that the top one is showing a seaplane, but cannot place where the pic was taken.
ReplyDeleteWW1 Westgate Seaplane Station which expanded into Manston David
ReplyDelete