The various companies that have gone under various names
containing the word Riveroak and have had some of the same senior management
team but none of which ever seem to have had any non senior management staff held
another series of drop in sessions relating to their desire to have some part
of government use government powers to take the Manston site from its current
owners, for them, held another series of public drop in sessions last week.
This relates to Manston airport which started commercial
operations in the 1960s with Air Ferry Ltd and following a series of operator
bankruptcies starting with Air Ferry Ltd and finishing with Plane Station Ltd
finally closed in 2014 after going through the hands of a couple of operators
to big to go bust.
At the moment it belongs to the group that rescued the
Pfizer site in Sandwich and is now the largest source of local employment.
Their plans are for light industry and housing and as we need the jobs, have to
build the houses somewhere in Thanet and they have a proven track record, it
would seem most likely that this is what will happen. They own the site, have
already run a local site that provides hundreds of much needed local jobs and
having sold the Pfizer site presumably have the money.
This is the link to their website http://www.stonehillpark.co.uk/
The last RiverOak drop in session I went to was back in July
2016 and here is the link to some of the posts I wrote about this back then http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=riveroak+canterbury
This time around I noticed that the Ramsgate session was
very short and as Ramsgate would be the main town affected by aircraft noise I
assumed the session would be far too crowded so I went to the Canterbury one,
which as Canterbury isn’t affected was pretty much deserted.
Having tried fairly hard at the last session and in
subsequent emails to get my concerns across I was expecting some understanding
of the main environmental issues, that I first raised with the RiverOak team
about a year ago, to be going along the road to solutions.
The two main issues being Particulate pollution and its
impact on public health and noise pollution over Ramsgate and how any
insulation scheme would operate in a large conservation area, with so many
listed buildings.
The don’t seem to have done any work on either issue, this
is something that makes it very difficult to follow what they intend. Their
main concerns seem to be related to conforming to the minimum requirements
required by The Department for Transport to initiate a Development Consent
Order and honestly the Riveroak representatives I spoke to just didn’t seem to
have a good grasp of the environmental impact of an airfreight hub.
I will use the particulate air pollution issue to illustrate
what I mean here.
Now I would guess that most people have heard about the
recent change of attitude towards diesel road vehicles due to the discovery
that the tiny particles that come out of their exhaust pipes are killing people.
The exhaust coming from a jet engine is much worse, mainly
because no one has worked out a way of attaching the catalytic converters and
filters that go on road vehicles, but also because burning jet engine fuel
produces a lot of particles.
It is important to appreciate the government is very
concerned about the effects on people living upwind of major road junctions
where as much as 10 tons of diesel is burn in a year.
Part of the proposals for the Manston DCO is that there will
10,000 freight plane movements there a year, now a freight plane like a 747
burns 1 tonne of fuel per ground movement. It burns around 1 gallon of fuel per
second with a takeoff burning around 2.5 tonnes.
Speaking to two of Riveroak's environmental specialists and realising that they just hadn't a clue how much fuel a freight plane burns and just couldn't seem to grasp the figures I think sums up the whole problem for me.
Thanet already has reasonably high levels of particulate air
pollution, like the rest of the southeast this is due to the prevailing wind
direction across the south of the uk.
Particulate pollution kills people in considerable numbers,
here is the Wiki article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulates
roughly every doubling of the background level increases the chances of lung
cancer by about 35%. The latest research points at it being the main cause of
alzheimer's.
Like the business with scrapping diesel cars the research and
information is all fairly recent and the only airport I know of where the particulate
pollution has been measures is Los Angeles
Here is the map showing how much and how far.
Next the out and about photos taken in Ramsgate today
finally the latest books to go out in the bookshop
It is good that you are asking pertinent questions, even though, perhaps unsurprisingly, you were given inadequate responses. The airport issue has become swamped with invective and the peddling of untruths and it is time that facts took centre stage. I believe the owners' plans will win the day, once the layers of hype and scaremongering are stripped away.
ReplyDeleteI have to question that if 2500 houses are built and the average household had 2 cars, also those business's with hgv's so what will the environmental impact be on thanet. I did put this question to Mallon but got no answer.. . At the moment we In thanet are heading for a terrible water shortage.. even southern water has publicall stated their objections to houses due to the lack of water ..
ReplyDeleteYou raise very proper concerns, Kapo, but, whether we like it or not, we have been instructed, unequivocally, to build thousands of new houses. If a large percentage of these can be accommodated on the one brownfield site of the former airport, it will ease the threat to numerous other greenfield sites.
DeleteJimmy I think the issue here may have moved into the dimension of politics, where the outcome becomes a gamble based around the perceived benefits to the protagonists rather than anything to do with common sense and local people.
ReplyDeleteKapo I think there is an element of scale here where you have to consider how many cars and lorries you would have to have there to burn 10,000 tonnes of diesel in a year. Something along the lines of a lorry burns around 10 miles to the gallon whereas a freight plane around a gallon a second.
You get about 250 gallons to the tonne or about 2,500 lorry miles and I suppose about 50 mpg for a diesel car… oh well you can do the maths of you want
The house building targets set by government for Thanet is approaching 10,000 so regardless of whether they are built at Manston they are going to be built somewhere in Thanet. These are just for the children and grandchildren of local people and no doubt some will be for the 3,000 to 4,000 on the social housing list!
ReplyDeleteActually the government House building target is around 17,100, and at the KGA Cinference thus week in Birmingham Communities Secretary Sajid Haved said he us about to change the rules to make all Councils build more. Ashford which is a growth spot that has done little except build for a number of years has just had its local p,an sent back demanding more houses be planned. The pretence of Airport or houses is just that, a pretence. Thus government is determined to force more houses on all of us anyway.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you have emphasised that point, Chris. It is shameful that you have had to suffer abuse from the "Open Manston at any costs" brigade and particularly from an MP who seems wedded to a certain company.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the Clarification Chris, I am assuming that any number of houses built anywhere in Thanet, including Manston reduces the quota and hence the number that have to be built in other part so Thanet.
ReplyDelete