Kent International Airport at Manston, safety issues.

Over on Thanet Life Blog local councillor and aviator Simon Moores is engaged in a dialogue about the chances of a plane crash landing in Ramsgate, see http://birchington.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/winging-it.html this seems to revolve around something like winning the lottery, a game of chance with very long odds.

I guess most of us who live in Ramsgate have seen an aeroplane very low over the town and not behaving completely conventionally, something that the untrained eye would construe an a near miss, but to the expert eye is probably well with in the bounds of safety.   

One way or another it is difficult to avoid some degree of awareness that Ramsgate is a town at the end of the runway and this does involve some element of risk, although quantifying that risk isn’t straightforward.

Obviously the risk of a plane crashing on part of Ramsgate varies dependent on a number of factors, the most obvious one being the number of flights, in the same way that the chances of winning the lottery relates to the number of tickets you buy.

Then there is the guidance equipment, radar and other gadgets, at Manston this has a sort of rather vague and rather bumpy recent history, what the standard of this equipment is at Manston now compared to the standards at the major airports that are being used for comparison, is something that I have lost track of.

There are of course the risks involved with various sorts of pollution, the most prominent recently being night time noise, how this would link to local educational achievement, what sort of amounts of sleep we would lose and how we would function with less sleep.      

My interest in the safety issues at Manston though stems from my concerns about our water supply, this is because the airport sits on top of the local underground drinking water reservoir.

In simple terms, the rain landing at Manston soaks into the ground, and not far under the surface this ground is chalk and this chalk acts like a great big sponge, which stores millions of gallons of water.

At this point Queen Victoria enters the story, history often pops up and often people wish it wouldn’t, in 1835 when the water in Ramsgate was pumped from under the town and most of the town’s sewage soaked into the ground, Victoria contracted a nasty disease here.

I suppose that that the greatest health improvements made by the Victorians related to drainage and drinking water, in simple terms moving the well away from the privy, and during the mid 1800s a sewer was put in here in Ramsgate also a water supply was dug under Manston, the pink bit on the map.

 What they did was to dig a well connected to a tunnel under the chalk which collected the water that was pumped into a large tank on top of a tower, pipes from this tank lead to the taps in people’s homes. 

As you can see from the map the tunnel follows the line of the main runway and is still one of the main sources of our water supply here in Thanet. A supply of water here in the southeast is a difficult thing to maintain and without vast expense we are likely to be reliant on this source for the foreseeable future.

Anyway for some time now I have been making a fuss about the protection of our water supply, funny bit next, some time ago I requested some documents about the local water supply form the council, and one of the ones they sent me had been copied from where I had published it on the internet previously, this made me chuckle and I wondered who else they had sent it to with all my links to the documents included, see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/drink/id39.htm

Anyway the airport, council and environment agency behaved very responsibly about the drainage issues at the airport, held a public consultation, which I responded to, see http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/fish-chips-and-antifreeze-manston.html and http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/kent-international-airport-drainage.html well you know me there will be loads of it, mostly boring unless you drink the tap water here in Thanet, or worse than that pay the water bill. If you don’t fall into this bracket I would stop reading now.

The net result of all this was that the airport, environment agency, council and other interested parties thrashed out a plan to protect our drinking water supply, which unless there was some sort of unlikely aviation accident, resulting in a large fuel spillage on the green part of the airport, protected the local water supply quite well.

There was of course one big snag, isn’t there always, this was the airport had to pay for some fairly expensive pluming modifications, fortunately the owners Infratil are a very wealthy and very large company “down Under” so they said “no worries mate” “we won’t pee in your swimming pool if you don’t swim in our toilet” in fact all of the things one would expect and hope for.

Anyway now those nice people at Infratil have said that they don’t want to spend the money because they are selling the airport, see http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/kent-international-airport-at-manston.html so they will be providing a new plan, which won’t be so good, or so expensive. Something along the lines of we will only pee on your pool a little bit, but we don’t mind if you take the occasional dip in our toilet, I think.               

Kent International Airport at Manston to reduce environmental safeguards.

I think this is self explanatory.

As someone who either responded to our Environmental Permit (EP) application consultation or attended our public meeting in 2011, I thought it would be helpful to update you on our progress given that Infratil have recently put the airport up for sale.

The original EP application that we consulted on during 2010/11 was formally withdrawn by Infratil on 13 March 2012. However, Infratil have committed to providing us with a revised EP application which is more economically viable but still satisfies the key environmental risks posed at the airport from de-icers, etc that were covered in the original consultation.

Clearly, this is disappointing for us as a regulator, Infratil and the local community but I'm sure you will understand that global trading conditions for the aviation industry have changed dramatically since our original consultation period began.

In the interim, we are continuing to work with Infratil to offer advice and guidance on their revised EP application with a site meeting scheduled during April. We are also reviewing our regulatory enforcement options for the site given that the risks remain with or without a current EP in place.

Once the new application has been received we will go through a full public consultation and involve you and the local community.

Please feel free to share this information with your local community. If you have any further questions, please let me know.

Regards.
Alan

Follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/EnvAgencySE
P Here at the Environment Agency we've used nearly a quarter less office paper compared to last year. The paper saved so far would build a stack as high as the Eiffel Tower. Please play your part - if you only need something once, avoid printing it

Isle of Thanet Groundwater Quality News-Issue 4

This is an important document about the quality of Thanet’s water, click on the link to read it http://www.thanetonline.com/311tol/id2.htm I should stress here that Thanet’s ground water is processed before we drink it, so as it says on the cover of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, “Don’t Panic”

This issue has site specific updates at the end, the main issues in the this part being the Thor Chemicals site and the Manna Hutte site.

What are you drinking, the water or the wave? A review of drinking water pollution in Thanet

First, DON’T PANIC, make sure you are carrying your towel, engineering hat on for a mo. Before you read any of this stuff be assured that apart from swimming in the sea in Thanet after heavy rain, you aren’t likely to be drinking high concentrations of raw sewage, weedkiller and other nasties.

The environment Agency started to produce a leaflet groundwater quality in Thanet, if this is available on their website then I can’t find it, but I have managed to get hold of the first three of these leaflets covering the period from October 2009 to June 2010.

Thanet sits on its own drinking water reservoir, the chalk under Thanet acts like a big sponge and anything liquid that falls on the ground is soaked up and since pre history there have been wells dug into this chalk sponge, water drawn from these wells has been drunk by the people of Thanet.

The chalk filters some of the nasties out, some get through with the water and some parts of this underground reservoir have been so badly damaged by toxic chemical spills that the only thing to do is to keep pumping contaminated water from wells around the spill, so that it doesn’t spread to other parts of the chalk.

If you look at the rather splodgy map above you will see it has red bits on it, the red circles show the area around the drinking water pumping stations, and wiggly sausage like lines extending from these are “adits” underground tunnels for water leading to the pumping stations.

There are quite tight controls about what you can pour into the ground over the red bits, hence all the fuss over China Gateway, where the firm involved intended to let out lots of industrial units with their own septic tanks, draining into the red bit.

The green bits are not so sensitive, if you get caught short in the country, but not really a good place to throw away the contents of the bottle at the back of the shed with the skull and crossbones on it.

The blue bits are even less sensitive, but what goes in there will probably eventually come out.

Issue one says that the EA have helped get £30m to mend our Victorian sewers and redirect sewage pipes that lead directly to the chalk and lots over other reassuring things see http://www.thanetonline.com/gwqn/

I am assuming that having boiled your water or whatever you are now ready for issue two, this tells us among other things that the environmentally conscious Thanet Earth wanted to pour their effluent into the drinking water, but that after discussions with the EA has now got permission to build a sewage pipe. It’s a bit vague about where the effluent is going at the moment, perhaps they are crossing their legs, see http://www.thanetonline.com/gwqn/id3.htm

Issue three interestingly enough doesn’t contain the interesting page 4 “Site Specific Updates” that I read with interest in issues one and two, possibly nothing of note occurred at specific sites in Thanet during that period. Here is the link to issue three http://www.thanetonline.com/gwqn/id4.htm

Fish Chips and Antifreeze, Manston Airport Drains Again, Drop in session in Ramsgate Tomorrow.

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.

Kent International Airport Drainage Discharge Consent

This Environmental Permit application consultation began today and closes on 15 September 2010.

The link below gives details about where you can view the application and where to send any comments that you may wish to make.

Additionally, an advert will be appearing in the Thanet Times this week to advertise the consultation period to a wider audience.

http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/research/library/consultations/122557.aspx

for anyone interested I have put the application up on the web at http://www.thanetonline.com/kia/id2.htm most of the interest is in the letter at the end.

I have put up odd documents about this before at http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/drink/ and have had a glance at the latest consent.

100,000 litres seems to be an adequate interceptor to protect Pegwell Bay the largest planes flying to from Manston hold about 250,000 litres of fuel I seem to remember.

What does concern me though is the runoff onto the grass as this goes straight to our underground drinking water reservoir beneath.

Here are some of the plans http://www.thanetonline.com/kia/id4.htm that go with the text, there may be others to come the documents are not easy to unscramble and convert into something that opens in a conventional webpage.

There is rather a lot of information coming my way at the moment, I have decided the best thing I can do is just publish it as I get it, any help interpreting it would be gratefully appreciated

The picture is from the book that I publish Twilight of the Pistons see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/1997_twilight_of_pistons.htm

Blogs and stuff

I have just noticed that the counter that I put on this blog about two years ago has passed the 100,000 mark, so a thank you to all of you who have put up with my ramblings.

Here follows a fast touch-typed rant during lunchtime in the bookshop, that will be in need of correction if I ever get around to it, very much thought as I go along tha something really intended for publication.

Looking at the various posts here and on the other blogs, one is very much aware of a sense of dissatisfaction with Thanet District Council, particularly over asset disposal and leisure facilities.

I am not really sure how much of this is real and how much of it is perceived and talking to people in the shop it is obvious that this feeling extends outside of the blogs and is almost universal.

I think much of the problem stems from poor communication with local people and frankly whith the internet this really shouldn’t be happening, the council has a whole press department that is supposed to tell us what they are up to.

Frankly it shouldn’t be difficult to extract the major things that are likely to effect peoples lives, from the masses of information the council publish, and publish information about these somewhere on the internet.

My last posting is a case in point, the planning application to decimate Hartsdown Park in Margate was hidden in plain view on the internet, published among the masses of planning applications for double glazing, shop signs and so on and I missed it.

The business over putting Westcliff hall into a residential property auction see ECRs post http://eastcliffrichard.blogspot.com/2010/07/flog-your-assets.html is another case of dreadful communication and bad pr, I asked Ramsgate Town Council about this yesterday and I know that they have been involved in the plans by local people to rejuvenate this.

The sad truth here is that Ramsgate Town Council hadn’t been told about putting it into this auction by Thanet district Council, so if they can’t be bothered to tell the town council what hope do local residents hope to have of finding out what is going on their town.

Another one is the Margate Caves site see my post about it http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2010/07/new-plans-for-margate-caves-site.html something else that I hope Margate people will take up, however I am not sure that what looks like impossible access to what should be an important tourist attraction, would be grounds for objecting to the planning application.

The development on the slipways in Ramsgate is another one see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2010/06/new-development-in-ramsgate-harbour.html although it is being talked about in Ramsgate as a done deal already, I can’t find anything about it on the council’s planning website. Once again the problem here isn’t likely to be something that would be somthing to object to it on planning grounds, nonetheless the question, will the harbour be viable with only one slipway? Is a vital one to the economy of Ramsgate as a town.

There is quite a bit of comment on the two posts about Manston airport see http://eastcliffrichard.blogspot.com/2010/07/oozalum-bird.html and http://bignewsmargate.blogspot.com/2010/07/manston-airport-is-it-issue.html and once again I find there is very much a sense of the council not taking local people with them.

It is quite ridiculous for people to suggest that the noise issue in Ramsgate is a new one, over fifty years ago the problem was such that the American air force decided that Ramsgate was only suitable coloured troops, who at the time they considered racially inferior or some such thing, possibly deaf. All of the officers were billeted in Margate away from the aircraft noise see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/blogpicts2/id71.htm

Perhaps the council are suggesting that Ramsgate people are racially inferior now, or possibly deafer than those in Margate, how it can be down to a council governing Ramsgate from what always has been and always will be our main rival town can decide fairly that Ramsgate should or shouldn’t have night flights passing over it is beyond me.

The question being asked here to our council dominated by cabinet members and Conservative members on the north of the island is; your biggest problem is Margate a large town with a leisure and shopping based economy that has collapsed, the main rival town Ramsgate appears to be regenerating from within, will you allow disruptive night flights over it?

Always for me though the airport issue comes down to our water supply and there are two aspects that won’t go away.

One is replenishment of the aquifer, by this I mean that amount of Thanet that can be concreted over is finite if we want to retain our essential water supply, this water supply has already been severely effected by various major pollution incidents and the low level but widespread pollution caused by the high level of population and associated infrastructure above.

The remaining mostly green bit of Thanet has Thanet Earth, with plans for expansion, China Gateway and the business park all with plans for more concrete and roads, the new road from Ramsgate to the main London road and the airport expansion.

The problem here is that you can have some of these things but you can’t have all of them and still have enough of a water supply for our domestic, industrial and agricultural needs.

The other problem is that over the commercial life of the airport there has been a lax attitude to water pollution safety issues, there is some information about this on this website I put up the last time I looked into the water pollution issue, see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/drink/ if people consider that there isn’t enough information here I do have some more I could publish too.

Truth is that I don’t want to scupper aspects of the airport that could be commercially beneficial to Thanet but on the other hand I don’t want us to go down the road to something that makes neither environmental nor economic sense.

One thing I find worrying here is that it is obvious that the airport has a long history of a lax attitude to safety in terms of water pollution and any airport with a lax attitude to safety in any area is a matter for concern.

Anyway is suppose I had better go and do some work now.

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.

Ramsgate Gasworks demolition more pictures and some environmental considerations.

As you can see the demolition work is going on a pace, I have made some enquiries about possible health and environmental implications; this is tempered by the urgent need to get the site developed.

One aspect that concerns me is the dust coming from the site that may be contaminated, another is the ground water pollution. As most of you who read this blog know I have a background in science and engineering, so I sometimes see things from that perspective.

My understanding of the situation is that this site has been partly remediated and that is probably the most contaminated part of the site, click on the link to see what the council have to say about chemicals present on the site http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/410b/id11.htm

I believe that the council is taking my concerns seriously, but has had some difficulties from the gas companies involved so that further intervention may be necessary, many thanks to Alan who has offered to help with this one, for those of you who wish to know more about various aspects of this issue here is the link to his website http://www.hatheway.net/

Click on the link for more pictures of the demolition http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/410b/id12.htm the dust cloud that appeared to be emanating from the site may show up in some of the pictures, depending on your computer monitor.

The other aspect that concerned me were the groundwater implications, click on the link to relevant extracts to the replies I have had about this http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/410b/id13.htm while I accept that it is unlikely that the gasworks contamination would impact on our drinking water, I was interested to see the adit leading from Ramsgate to the water abstraction point.

It certainly makes one aware of how vulnerable our aquifer is to pollution from within the town.

Lord of the Manor pumping station is in a bit of a difficult position one way and another, with one adit running under Manston runway and the other a fairly built up area, sorry the maps didn’t line up see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/410b/id14.htm

Anyway on a lighter note – apart from the ones that came out too dark that is – here are the pictures of Ramsgate from the last couple of days http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/410b/id15.htm

Thor Chemicals Margate explosion update.

It’s two years since the explosion at Thor Chemicals Margate, this was a plant that closed in 1988 and was being decommissioned.

The general understanding locally was that the only operation going on there was a water pumping station removing the toxic chemicals that had been spilt into Thanet’s drinking water aquifer during the years of the factory’s operations.

This link takes you to The Health and Safety Executive’s report on the explosion http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/blogpicts129/id22.htm

I believe this exemplifies why as an ex-engineer, with a practical understanding of the sort of things that go on in factories, I am fundamentally against industrial development on the last part of our underground drinking water reservoir that hasn’t already been contaminated.

I am a bit lost for words when it comes to commenting on the actual explosion so will leave you with the following tongue twister.

The thunder god went for a ride, Upon his favourite filly, "I'm Thor, I'm Thor!" he cried, His horse replied, "You forgot your saddle silly”

Many thanks to Tim Garbutt’s for his perseverance with the freedom of information act that finally obtained The Health and Safety Executive’s report on the explosion.

The man from the ministry, Pamplona bull run and other thoughts for Sunday.

An old friend of mine who I hadn’t seen for some time dropped in for a chat today, he now works in what we once would have called the ministry of education but is now probably made up of a great many government departments, at local, national and European level.

We had quite a considerable chat about the coming of the end of the public service gravy train, partly as the government department he works in is one that David Cameron says he will close if he gets elected.

My notion that the whole UK education system could be improved for nothing, just by ensuring that the teachers took the examinations with their students and that as long as the same examiner marked all of each classes and their teachers exam papers, many of the problems in our education system would be resolved, went down quite well with him.

Interestingly he considered that many civil servants including him were grossly over paid, he considered that pay in the public sector was now markedly better than in the private sector, for similar jobs.

Catching up on this week’s news, “Man gored to death by bull in Pamplona run,” was one I had missed click here for story and video footage, it seems hardly credible that this should still be going on in modern Europe.

Having read the article and watched the video I am trying to get my head round how I feel about this, I suppose this is probably the most dangerous legal public event still in existence.

From the point of view of the young chap who got killed, I don’t suppose he really thought of the danger or the awful consequences for his family. I would like to say that when I was in my late teens or early twenties, especially if goaded on by my friends, I would have been too sensible to what he did, but am not so sure.

From the bulls point of view as the bulls that are bred for Spanish bullfighting are just that and wouldn’t exist without the sport, this is more difficult for me than just saying it’s barbaric and has no place in a modern world.

If I had been born a bull in the UK, castration, intensive farming and the slaughterhouse would have been my lot.

The bulls bred for Spanish bullfighting however pretty much range freely, as close to the bovine natural habitat as one is likely to find in Europe today, I think reaching maturity intact and dieing relatively quickly has more appeal for me.

Anyway moving away from the Hemmingwayesk to the more mundane, I have just put last weeks planning applications on http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/ and am once again pondering the bizarre nature of TDC planning online.

The most ridiculous aspect of the plans as they appear online is that pretty much all of them are scans of scale drawings, the only way one can work out any of the dimensions on them is to use a scale ruler against the paper sheet.

This means that when viewing the planning drawings online it is impossible to tell how long any of the lines are i.e. the height, width or depth of any of the proposed buildings, rendering most of the documents published on the site next to useless.

I have been asking TDC to get linier scales added to the drawings before they are scanned for some time, this wouldn’t be difficult, it could be done as simply as having a rubber stamp of each scale made and applying it to the plan.

I know that TDC are working on a new planning site, which should be working by now, however they tell me that this has been beset with technical problems. Not having got as far as putting liner scales on the sheets yet suggests there will be quite a long wait before we get anything really useful.

Pondering our local water contamination a question that occasionally flits through my mind is, would the combination of government agencies that appear to be incapable of insisting in basic safety measures, like a flood risk assessment for Pleasurama, combine through incompetence or design to supply contaminated tap water in a first world country click here to read.

Still on the water issue, some of you may be interested to see how Thanet Earth have addressed some of the problems that China Gateway will have to solve click here to view, as you can see it will a mammoth and expensive task. I believe something like this sort of solution will have to be used for the car and lorry park runoff, looking at the size of these parking areas the tanks will have to be massive

I will endeavour to add more as I get time today.

Thanet Water Quality Arsenic, Mercury and old lace.

I have published the charts of Thanet ground water quality on one of my websites for anyone that wishes to look at them.

It is a rather unusual web file due to the complex nature of the original document and the large size of it.

You need to use the arrows bottom left to move the tabs along the bottom that show the individual chemicals, clicking on the tabs then reveals the chart for each chemical.

You have to appreciate that this cocktail of chemicals is scrubbed out by reverse osmosis at Fleet reservoir (Nr Manston Airport) by Southern Water, the result is then diluted with water piped in from outside Thanet until drinkable quality is reached.

Thanet's potable (drinkable) water is blend of water from Plucks gutter (river Stour), the Thanet Aquifers and from Wingham Well.

My main concern here is the unregulated agricultural boreholes used for irrigation and crop washing.

Click here for the charts

Click here for some other document about local water that may be of interest

Budget and blogs

Having the budget very much on my mind and looking on many of the political blogs that I look at when some political event occurs the general feeling seems to be that it wasn’t a good budget, even on a lot of the socialist blogs the comment is pretty negative.

There is a remarkable amount of absence of comment about the budget on the local Labour blogs.

For me it seemed to lack the major banking reforms that I would have expected from a socialist government, to me the budget seemed to be much more aimed a forthcoming election than dealing with the current economic crisis.

I also would have expected the government to make use of the crisis to reform public sector pay and pensions, which are something we can no longer afford at the present rate.

I find it hard to see how the government can justify paying civil servants over £2,000 per week when the country is effectively bankrupt, and any employee who really justified a wage of that order wouldn’t have any problem getting a job in the private sector.

Certainly if there are civil servants that it is felt do justify wages of that order then they ought to have to regularly take some sort of postgraduate examination in their field of expertise to prove it.

When we are talking about individuals that for the most part only produce paperwork in most cases any competent clerk or secretary could do their jobs, in fact in many cases this is what happens anyway.

The public perception of the people running the country the county and the district at the moment is that a great many of the people involved put personal financial gain far ahead of any other objective.

Now the only way we can afford to pay these enormous sums is to borrow vast amounts of money.

I have to admit to wondering what happens when the point comes where there is no more money available for the government to borrow, or will this constraint never occur?

It’s certainly happening to businesses and their employees at the moment perhaps we should all work for the public sector and have a country entirely reliant on debt.

China Gateway’s shares trade at 3p

50,000 shares in Commercial Group Properties the firm behind China Gateway have just traded at 3p each that is for£1,500 if whoever bought them did so at the end of last year they would have cost them £100,000

Click the link to go to the London stock Exchange site in case you think this is some sort of April fools joke http://www.londonstockexchange.com/en-gb/pricesnews/prices/system/detailedprices.htm?sym=GB00B1P70L34GBGBXAIM%20B1P70L3CMGP

Roger Gale Steve Ladyman the drains and Manston Airport

The front page article in The Isle of Thanet Extra today is about ground water pollution here in Thanet, with comment from our two MPs.

Reading the article it was obvious that although both MPs had attended a meeting with the environment agency about ground water quality but didn’t really understand the problems properly.

This is essentially about five different types of drain and understanding the differences between them.

1 Foul sewers these lead to a waste treatment plant, the water and effluent from these is treated and the treated water then goes into the sea.

2 Soakaways, these are often roadside drains the water from these soaks into the chalk, which also forms our drinking and agricultural water reservoir, some of these have interceptors that remove any fuel or oil spillage (how effective they are depends on their size relative to the size of the spillage and how well they are maintained) some of the don’t have interceptors.

3 Direct discharge into the sea, once again these are mostly roadside drains some with and some without interceptors.

4 Septic tanks these are mostly attached to rural properties and are emptied by the council the effluent being taken by tanker lorry to the treatment plant, the problem with these is that many of them leak, either by accident or design. Having them emptied is expensive so people sometimes make a hole in them so they don’t have to be emptied so often.

5 Private treatment plants such as Pfizer has and China Gateway wanted to have, these use bacteria and sedimentation to process the effluent the processed water is then either discharged into the sea or soakaways. Where China Gateway came unstuck is that discharge into soakaways on the water source protection zones is not allowed.

Roger Gale appears to think that industrial developers and the airport don’t play a significant part in the ground water problem, he is quoted in the article thus: “…it isn’t necessary to fault big business or the airport; it’s all down to us.”

The pollution problem that the environment agency faces is that the quality of the ground water is low and this is mostly caused by a great many small leaks and spillages.

The other problem that they face is that we are around the point where any more concreting over the source protection zones means that there will not be enough surface area for the rain to soak into to provide us with sufficient water supply.

Because of the various large pollution incidents like Thor and Sericol the amount of underground water that we can use has become greatly reduced and is concentrated around Manston.

This leads to the problem of what we can get away with at Manston both in terms of airport and industrial expansion, which poses the question how much more dare we concrete over? And the question of how much risk is acceptable in terms of a pollution incident there?

As far as the concreting, the environment agency needs to set defined limits to how much more there can be so that the airport and the industrial developers there know where they stand in terms of expansion.

Most importantly though is the problem of how the risk management is assessed for a fuel spillage caused by an aviation accident, having spoken to a lot of people that understand aviation a worst case scenario would be something akin to the recent air accident at Narita international airport, near Tokyo.

By this I mean an air crash on the grass part of the airfield where the fuselage of the aircraft runs over the wing that contains the fuel tanks rupturing them. The 747s flying to and from Manston can carry 50,000 gallons of fuel so a spillage of 20,000 gallons would not seem out of the bounds of probability.

Although there are many variables we need a clear cut answer from the environment agency as to what quantity, for both types of aviation fuel, would cause irredeemable damage to our essential water supply and to restrict the airports operations accordingly.

I noticed in the article Steve Ladyman said that the risks at the airport were being managed properly, however at the moment the main runway has no fuel interceptor, the contingency plan being to turn off the valves from the drains and contain a fuel spillage on the runway.

In reality with a plane on fire with people inside I wonder would they really stop the fuel from running away? So we really need an assessment of the maximum amount of fuel that should be carried by aircraft using Manston, until the interceptor is installed.

Of course there will always be a risk that our underground water supply will be irreversibly damaged by an air crash and I am afraid it would probably be the end of most of the agriculture in Thanet including Thanet Earth, it would also lead to greatly increased water bill for us. What this is about though is acceptable risk management and in the current economic climate with a doubling of unemployment in Thanet during the last year local industry badly needs to know exactly where it stands in terms of future expansion and future limitations on existing levels of operation.

Thanet Earth. Aquam an undam? What are you drinking, the water or the wave?

I have been discussing the hard standing drainage for Thanet earth with TDC and the EA, normally I am inclined to modify these communications into short posts for you all, but I am putting up my communications between TDC and me, pretty much in full, my emails in black and TDCs in red. For once it looks like a satisfactory outcome and a job properly done!

The reason that I am doing this is that it serves to emphasise how important interceptors are and why I feel that Manston Airport shouldn’t be operating without one on the main runway, positioned as it is on our essential drinking water aquifer and currently discharging into an internationally acclaimed wetland:

Could you kindly look into this one for me, or tell me who can, could you also tell me how big the interceptors are if any are installed?

A mixture of factors has come together making an aspect of Thanet Earth potentially very dangerous indeed.

When the planning application for Thanet Earth was approved there was no environmental impact study done, I don’t know if this was because it counted as an agricultural development or if it just slipped under the radar.

This means that the surface drainage of the car, lorry parks and loading areas have drains that run into soakaways not only are these on the aquifer, but they are very close to where Thanet Earth is pumping out water from a borehole for its irrigation and crop washing.

The recent disparity between diesel prices in different countries mean that lorries are being fitted with larger fuel tanks 1,000 litres is not uncommon.

I doubt that the driver would even notice if while he was manoeuvring his lorry a bollard or something caught and ruptured his fuel tank and as lorries often have two of these tanks it could be a considerable time before he noticed.

There is also a new crime spreading across Europe which is pertinent to lorry parks on the aquifer, below an extract from a news article.

On the 24th of June when the workmen arrived for a new day they found 3 lorries that have been filled up the last night with their tanks completely empty, having been pierced with a pickaxe. They didn't even take half of the diesel, with the remainder spilled on the ground. The company lost more than 4000 € that day from fuel theft in addition to the cost of repairing 3 fuel tanks.

One month later the smell of spilt diesel still engulfs the facility. Now the lorries are guarded during the night by a man with a licence to carry and use firearms. On the fence a sign warns: be wary of pitbull dogs.

Apologies for the delayed response, I have just returned from annual leave. The original consultation on this app predates my arrival, but I am chasing up the relevant info on this site and will get back to you once I am in possession of the facts. In the meantime, the Environment Agency may be a useful source of information regarding the history of this one.

I have from the EA, Lorry and loading areas do drain to soakaway but via Class 1 full retention interceptors with oil detector alarms and with pen-stop values up and down stream of the interceptor that can be used to stop any contaminated discharge to the interceptor or from the interceptor.

So the question I would like the answer to is; is the interceptor and surface containment area able to contain the spillage from these newly enlarged lorry tanks?

Chatting to a few lorry drivers that buy transport books from the shop I gather 2,000 litres isn’t an fuel unusual capacity.

I have now received a response from the RPS Principal Engineer working on the Thanet Earth project (vide infra) and visited the site to inspect progress of these works.

In answer to your question regarding a spill from a large tank on a lorry, the worst case scenario options have been calculated for the principal parking areas of the site as follows. I should add, that the site is also designed to restrict access to the buildings to designated areas, thus deterring lorries from parking anywhere else on the site (e.g. on the side of a roadway, where a spill could directly enter ground).

'The interceptors installed are Conder 'full retention' separators, are fitted with automatic closure devices that comprise a floating disc or ball and plate in a cylindrical shaft over the outlet duct. In major spillages, or when the maximum oil retention capacity is retained the
closure device is forced down over the aperture to prevent discharge.
Audio and visual alarms will action when the oil level is at 90% capacity.

With regard storage of accidental spills, I have calculated the storage volumes available at each of the separators based on a worst case of having 89.9% of the oil storage capacity full before the spillages i.e. just prior to alarm for emptying:

- Separator 1 (Pack house) = remaining capacity within the interceptor
of 400l + drainage system and above ground containment of 75,000l =
75,400l.

- Separator 2 (GH2/3)= remaining capacity within the interceptor of 80l
+ drainage system and above ground containment of 10,000l = 10,080l.

- Separator 3 (GH4) = remaining capacity within the interceptor of 40l +
drainage system and above ground containment of 4,000l = 4,040l.'

As you can see, the absolute worst case scenario would be for a lorry tank to be punctured in the vicinity of drainage running to separator 3, but this would still be able to offer protection commensurate with losing two entire large HGV tank loads of fuel, although the primary concern, should this ever occur, would obviously be the fire risk in the first instance

I will reply more coherently when I have discussed this with a friend who specialises in this area, sorry I can’t do it manu propria, initial thoughts have me wondering what happens with a fuel spillage in a rain storm round number 3, I will do some sums.

Kent County Council and the dodgy drains.

I have been a bit reluctant to post this one as in some ways as it really is an appalling reflection on the duty of care by the council.

First two quotes from the environment agency, both of which I can substantiate as I have them in writing.

“There is thought to be some control over the quality of water used for irrigation and crop washing, although this is not regulated by the Environment Agency.”


“With regard to the Highways Agency - that was a quirk of the original Water Resources Act 1991. It does cause us problems to have soakaways from roads draining to the chalk. We are hoping to address this in the more vulnerable areas in the future. Any new roads built since 1992 (when the Groundwater Protection Policy came out) have been required to install interceptors and to drain the water to outside SPZ1. This has been followed on Thanet resulting in significant improvement in some areas.

We are aware that the Highways Agency is currently connected to the airport drainage system and that this drainage system does discharge direct to the Pegwell Bay. However, we have seen the planning application for the East Kent Access Road. In the plans it appeared that the section of the road currently connected into the Manston Airport drainage would be removed. We believe that the new road would be drained to ground via soakaways in areas where the groundwater is slightly less sensitive and to Pegwell Bay in areas where the groundwater is very sensitive.”

Ed. This means that some of our roadside drains lead to soakaways right next to the unmonitored boreholes. Concerned or not about local water issues I will leave you to draw your one conclusions about the safety aspect of this situation, say compared to pumping raw sewage into the sea next to a beach.

Another significant chemical pollution incident

Chemical pollution at Thor chemicals in Thanet this time and once again it’s soaked down into the ground water.

It is not my intention to scaremonger here, but to add to my reasons why we should be considering our underground drinking water reservoir much more seriously, when planning future local development and expansion of existing enterprises.

Once again I am stressing that spillages and leaks into the ground are something that happens in industry, I know because I worked in industry.

Our underground drinking water reservoir is an essential local resource with out which we could not supply sufficient water to people’s homes, agriculture and industry.

The chalk under Thanet acts like a huge sponge where our water is collected and stored and bits of this sponge now has areas of poisoned water in it, the cumulate effect of the various poisoned areas will undoubtedly cause expense and problems for generations to come.

The proposed China Gateway development is a huge and very densely designed industrial estate, right in the middle of this reservoir very close to where our drinking water is pumped out of the ground.

Manston airport is also on top of the sensitive part of this reservoir, and if it is expanded so that there are a great many flights of very large planes, then it is probable that sooner or later there will be an air accident involving a large spillage of fuel or chemical cargo on the grassed part of the airport, which will soak into the ground.

Now while I am confident that Thanet District Council’s contaminated land team them are making sterling efforts to discover and cleanup previous and present pollution incidents, I think it is just plain stupid to take unnecessary risks with the water supply by carrying out perilous activities in the middle of the reservoir.

Rick has obtained some details about the Thor pollution click here to read

click here for the main post about the Sericol leak

Click here for the map of pollution locally

Click here for The British Geographical survey’s internal report on the Thanet underground water reservoir.

CHEMICAL CLEAR-UP

As Adscene has published a front page article about the leak directing people here for further information I have copied the post that did I when the Isle of Thanet Gazette published an article about it. I still haven’t had any satisfactory answers to the important I questions raised from the council.

I sent a letter to the Gazette, based on the post below, which they published this week with a response from the environment agency. The environment agency failed to answer the important questions below too, I have labelled them X1, X2 and X3, the only assurance that they did make is that it isn’t coming out of our taps now.

How dangerous is Cyclohexanone? The affects of exposure to this chemical are thought to cause neurological damage, damage to unborn children, altered immune system function, adverse effects on the respiratory system and affect the sensory system.

How much of the chemical would be dangerous? If you have to work in a contaminated environment in industry, you would have to wear a chemical protection suit and breathing apparatus where the concentration of the chemical exceeds 20 parts per million.

How much was spilt? No one really knows they have been extracting it from the chalk under Westwood since 2007 and have so far recovered about 500 tons of the chemical from the water pumped out of the chalk.

X1 Has it got into our drinking water, water used for crop irrigation and washing or water used for industry? No one really seems to know the complete answer to this one, most of the water used in Thanet is pumped from the porous chalk underground, as the leak went undetected for nearly 30 years and as there seems to be little regulation of private boreholes, it’s a bit of a grey area.

X2 Is the vapour coming out of the ground? I have asked the council and some of the local politicians, but haven’t yet received an answer

X3 Have there been any surveys of the health of the people living and working in the effected area because of the spillage? Once again I have asked the council and some of the local politicians, but haven’t yet received an answer.

What is this information based on?

The freedom of information request response from the environment agency click here to read

The International Labour Organization, part of the UN that produces regulatory information for member states click here to read

Scorecard the web's most popular resource for information about pollution problems and toxic chemicals click here to read

The British Geographical survey’s internal report on the Thanet underground water reservoir click here to read

Sericol Cyclohexanone leak

As the Isle of Thanet Gazette published a story about the leak I thought I ought to expand on it slightly, and answer as many questions as I can about it.

How dangerous is Cyclohexanone? The affects of exposure to this chemical are thought to cause neurological damage, damage to unborn children, altered immune system function, adverse effects on the respiratory system and affect the sensory system.

How much of the chemical would be dangerous? If you have to work in a contaminated environment in industry, you would have to wear a chemical protection suit and breathing apparatus where the concentration of the chemical exceeds 20 parts per million.

How much was spilt? No one really knows they have been extracting it from the chalk under Westwood since 2007 and have so far recovered about 500 tons of the chemical from the water pumped out of the chalk.

Has it got into our drinking water, water used for crop irrigation and washing or water used for industry? No one really seems to know the complete answer to this one, most of the water used in Thanet is pumped from the porous chalk underground, as the leak went undetected for nearly 30 years and as there seems to be little regulation of private boreholes, it’s a bit of a grey area.

Is the vapour coming out of the ground? I have asked the council and some of the local politicians, but haven’t yet received an answer

Have there been any surveys of the health of the people living and working in the effected area because of the spillage? Once again I have asked the council and some of the local politicians, but haven’t yet received an answer.

What is this information based on?

The freedom of information request response from the environment agency click here to read

The International Labour Organization, part of the UN that produces regulatory information for member states click here to read

Scorecard the web's most popular resource for information about pollution problems and toxic chemicals click here to read

The British Geographical survey’s internal report on the Thanet underground water reservoir click here to read