The Thanet Plane Question and some old Plane Photos in Thanet.

Just over 100 years ago Aeroplanes came to Thanet

This is a picture of an aeroplane at Margate in 1913.

Here a Bleriot Plane snapped in 1913 at Margate

The general public has had a considerable interest in aviation since.

Here in Thanet the ups and downs of Manston Airport, with its critics and supporters, some aspects of aviation here being both so crazy as to make all of wonder. When this craziness seems to be supported by our local politicians and council officers it can make all of wonder what on earth to believe.

I posted about one of these incidents this morning,

here is the link

This is St Mildred's in 1914

With the current bid to reopen Manston Airport as an airfreight hub there are now thousands of documents published on the internet, the most recent being on the pins website

Here is the link

The information is still flowing in, new things come up, people have to change their minds about aspects of the project, all in all it's fairly difficult both for the people supporting the plans and those against them.

I have tried all along with Manston to take a fairly balanced view, this goes back for more than 10 years, most of what I have said about it should come up by using the link below and when you get to the end of a page of posts clicking on the 'older posts' link at the bottom of each page of posts.

Here is the link

As you would expect with thousands of pages submitted by RiverOak RSP there will be things that I don't understand, either because I have made a mistake or they have. Periodically I ask them questions and some of these still have outstanding answers.

So having got a bit frustrated with this process I emailed pins today:-

"Hi Manston Case team at pins

 

I still haven’t had any response to my questions about particulate dispersion distances made both to pins and RiverOak rsp on numerous occasions, including a deadline 1 submission.

 

I have tried to search the post application documents, but like the application itself it doesn’t have a dedicated and reliable search facility or comprehensive index. Because the pins application isn’t published as a normal website in html but as a series of pdf documents this makes it almost invisible to search engines like Google. This means the word particulate only brings up 3 matches, my own submission no appearing at all. The application as published on the pins website brings up no matches for the word particulate.    

 

To be absolutely clear with this pm10s disperse (fall to the ground) within about 1km of the burn that generated them and pm2.5s travel much further as airborne matter and certainly further than the Thanet coastline.

 

RiverOaks various environmental documents all appear to have made the fundamental error of using the same dispersion distance for pm 2.5s they used for the much larger pm10s i.e. about 1km and basically not much further than the proposed airport perimeter.

 

Using this wrong figure has resulted in a figure of only 1 death in Thanet from particulate matter whereas using the correct dispersion distance for pm2.5s would suggest a considerable increase.

 

Broadly RiverOak documentation appears to agree with current information about pm2.5s, which indicates an increase of 10 μg/m3 equates to premature death or the early onset dementia around in 20%. Of the population.

 

20% of the Thanet population would be. around 30,000 people.

 

Here in Thanet the problem with and airfreight hub with more than 10,000 movements per year, which would burn more than 30,000 tonnes of kerosene on or near the ground at Manston, would be exacerbated by the onshore sea breezes holding the air pollution in the main concentrations of population.

 

Obviously if both the applicant and pins don’t check to ensure that they are using the right dispersion distance for pm2.5s and make any necessary modification to the application then in the light of my continued and publicly documented observations could bring what was probably an error into the area of negligence. This could open the way for litigation from both victims of the diseases and the deceased dependent relatives.

 

I also feel that it is unreasonable to receive no explanatory response about the 2.5pm dispersion distance from the applicant, despite asking on numerous occasions over a considerable period of time, as this wastes my time, particularly in checking over multiple documents and I should like to claim compensation for this wasted time.

    

Effectively from my point of view, I have had no answer but am left with the possibility that I may have been answered somewhere in around 500 complex and unindexed documents."

The reply I got was interesting, here it is:-

"Dear Mr Child

Thank you for your email.

The process is inquisitorial. The Examining Authority (ExA) has read your Deadline 1 submission and will ask questions arising from its content as it considers necessary. The next suite of written questions is scheduled to be published on 5 April 2019.

If you wish for your below email to be put before the ExA and considered for acceptance as an additional submission please confirm by response.

Kind regards

The Manston Airport Case Team"

I think what pins are saying here is that as part of the process pins will, if asked in the right way, put difficult questions to the applicant and get answers.

Anyway back to local history and old photos 

Here are a couple of a flying boat at Margate in 1932

 Much more recently here are some that Simon Moores sent me when we were preparing his book Thanet From the Air together in 2005

Here is the link to the book

We always have some books about Manston in the bookshop, the only one we publish is, Twilight of the Pistons. Here are some pictures from that.

and here is the link to the book

Work wise here in the bookshop 

here is the link to the books that went out today