Sunday Gas about Ramsgate Gasworks.

The main thing that I have taken an interest in over the last week, has been the demolition and remediation work taking place at Ramsgate Gasworks, this is very important as there is an intention to put 100 dwellings on the site.

I am gathering historical information about the gasworks and any help with this would be much appreciated.

I got involved in this one because neither the gas company nor the demolition firm contacted TDCs contaminated land officer before the work commenced, as they had previously promised to do so, this made me concerned that the decontamination wasn’t being supervised in the proper way.

There are several aspects of this that concern me, one being that disturbing the site that contains some chemical nasties could mean that some of them come our way, the other day there was dust blowing from the site. I have since heard that the contaminated land officer has visited the site and that they are now damping down to prevent this from happening.

The part of the site where they are working is still uncategorised, I take this to mean that they don’t know what is there in the way of contaminants, putting on my science and engineering hat for a moment, Cyanide and Arsenic are two of the many unpleasant chemicals that would be likely to be there, not something that we want blowing over the town.

Another aspect is the long term implications could be for the people living in the 100 dwellings if the decontamination is not done properly, as some of the chemicals that would have worked down through the porous chalk under the site would give off vapours that would leak up through the ground, long term exposure to these would lead to health problems, including genetic ones.

There may also be drinking water contamination issues here, it is fairly close to an adit (underground horizontal tunnel) leading to The Lord of The Manor pumping station. This combined with the likelihood that the gasworks would have had a well to provide water needed for processing the gas, my concern here is that if it is not properly plugged it could provide a path for the nasties down to the water table.

One of the problems associated with these sites are the gas holders, the older ones consist of a brick lined pit filled with water with a metal gas tank without a bottom floating on top. As more gas is pumped into the tank it rises up floating on the water, the main problem is that a lot of chemical nasties accumulate in the water and that brick lined pits leak. The water carries the nasties down through the chalk below.

So far I have discovered that the gasworks has had six of these gasholders, since it was established in 1824.

When it first started the gasworks was on the other side of Boundary Road, where Aldi Supermarket is now, for a time it operated on both sides of the road and then moved completely onto the site that is being demolished at the moment.

When Aldi supermarket was built I hadn’t developed an interest in local history, so I don’t yet know if the people who built it were even aware that they were doing so on top of an old gasworks, or if the site was properly decontaminated.

I will endeavour to gas on as the day progresses.

Airport noise pollution and Steve Ladyman, is he missing the main point?

I see that our MP Steve Ladyman has entered the local internet Kent International Airport debate with an online survey click on the link to take part http://www.stephenladyman.info/ you have to scroll down the page a bit to find the survey.

I must admit to wondering if he is asking the right questions here with the Stour estuary coming up on the BBC news website as one of the most polluted in Europe see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8267686.stm the map above comes from the article.

An interesting point on internet copyright here as I haven’t copied the map but just pointed the blog to show it from where it is hosted on the BBC website, does this constitute an infringement of their copyright?

When people do this to me without asking I am inclined to change the image to The Lacedaemonian Ambasadors, although obviously a very rude Illustration it was done by Aubrey Beardsley for the 1896 edition of Lysistrata by Aristophanes so it is a bit difficult to criticise.

Sorry I digress, the latest figures from the Environment Agency show the River Stour to be one of the most polluted in Europe this is one source for our drinking and agricultural water needs and it flows into the internationally acclaimed wetland Pegwell Bay.

Kent International Airport is on top of another of our drinking water sources, the underground aquifer and drainage, that doesn’t comply with the most basic safety standards, from the airport flows into Pegwell Bay.

The problem here is that the airport doesn’t comply with the Environment Agency’s water pollution requirements click on the links for a few documents that confirm what I am saying here.

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/drink/id53.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/drink/id52.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/drink/index.htm

My concern here is that we are meandering into a situation where badly regulated airport expansion combined with the multitude of other pollution problems here in Thanet could lead to an incident that could both put a considerable strain on out drinking water supply and make local agriculture including Thanet Earth a thing of the past.

Perhaps the question we should all be addressing is; should airport operation be allowed at all, until the airport conforms with basic environmental safeguards that the Environment Agency have been asking for, for a number of years.

Now I know noise at night is a serious concern although since the changes in the licensing of pubs and takeaways I can’t see that things could be much worse for us poor devils that have to live in the town centres. If you need any confirmation that our environment is now pretty much uninhabitable at night wander down Queen Street in Ramsgate, where you will see about 10 broken shop windows caused yet another bout of noisy and antisocial behaviour in the early hours of the morning.

Surely though the most important issue here is sustainable agriculture, fisheries and water supply, this issue should be our foremost priority when considering the airport and other commercial activities.

I find it hard to believe that the large and serious businesses that we so desperately need to invest in Thanet would even look at us twice while basic safety issues in the area have such a low priority.

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.

Drinking water pollution issues in Thanet

Sorry there was no post yesterday I have been looking into water pollution issues in Thanet since I published the water quality tables see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2009/04/thanet-water-quality-arsenic-mercury.html I have been approaching this in 3 ways.

Firstly studying the documents on the Southern Water website http://www.southernwater.co.uk/ it takes a fair amount of navigating links entering your post code and so on, and I will leave it to anyone that wants to go there to do so.

Next by examining documents produced by independent consultants one of these that I found interesting is about the problems associated with the Richborough refuse landfill, it would appear from reading the document that this poses a threat both to the River Stour and to the aquifer from the south, I don’t suppose that this document is readily available to people so I have published it on the web click on the link if you want to read it http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/blogpicts2/id91.htm

The other the information comes from someone I know who uses water for a light industrial process that requires water of a high quality, he has a private laboratory in Thanet where he tests our water on a daily basis, both before and after he has purified it by carbon filtration.

His opinion is that although our tap water is mainly stable and ok although chlorine levels get very high from time to time and that nitrate levels are above the EU recommended maximum.

Obviously the important question raised here is; is it safe to drink the water? The answer I am getting from scientists that are independent from any of the organisations involved is yes, but there is an exception that it could be harmful to very young babies, so I would recommend that people don’t make up powdered baby milk with it unfiltered.

There is also another factor here that it could effect yeast production when using it to make up powdered yeast for cooking, so if your bread won’t rise properly you could try bottled or filtered water.

The main issue here is that the more I discover about the state of our water supply the more convinced I am becoming that it is the main factor in determining if there should be any further development at Manston whatsoever.