Manston DCO informal consultation my initial economic benefit v environmental detriment questions.

As I think most people with an interest know, but perhaps fewer understand the DCO process is “front loaded”. This doesn’t actually mean to put the load in the front like a wheelbarrow, but in this context; it means to arrange or plan a project, or process, so that a large portion of activity occurs in an early period.

The idea being that the people wanting to get the government to accept a DCO, in this case RiverOak, engage with the people who are for, against or just interested in the project, look for the snags and pitfalls and find solutions prior to making an official submission to the DFT.

I don’t think it matters that much if you are for or against building an airfreight hub at Manston, in fact I would say that if you are for it, now is the right time to play devil’s advocate.

The DFT are very good at replying quickly and informatively to correspondence and because the legislation relating to DCOs insists that it is an open and transparent process the DFT are very good at publishing information about the correspondence they get on their website at https://infrastructure.planninginspectorate.gov.uk/projects/south-east/manston-airport/

RiverOak on the other hand are not, their last press release is now a moth old, none of the correspondence and responses to their informal consultation have been published on their website. In fact to me it appears that they are out-to-lunch. Perhaps they have bigger fish to fry and will get around to Manston eventually, or perhaps they have all gone on holiday.

Anyway about a week ago I wrote to them a preliminary email, see http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/manston-airport-dco-update-and-reason.html ccd it to the DFT, got a response from the DFT but haven’t heard anything from RiverOak apart from an automated response, impying they are out-to-lunch.

Time is getting on with respect to the deadline for their unofficial consultation, which is – as far as I understand – the centre for front loaded dialogue, so I have roughed out another email for them, see below.

Before I send it off I am asking on my blog and on such related Facebook Groups what readers think, I will also send it off to the DFT before sending it to RiverOak, this is to make sure that I should be putting my questions to RiverOak.

Anyway, here it is:-

Hi at RiverOak (at the moment I am a bit confused about who to write to there)

With respect to the questions already I have put to RiverOak in my email 10.08.2016 I initially sent it to George Yerrall, partly because he appears as RiverOak’s Chief Investment Officer on both RiverOak websites http://www.riveroakinvestments.co.uk/ and http://www.riveroakic.com/ and partly because he was the first member of RiverOak to respond to me when I initially emailed them.

I got an automatic response to my email 10.08.2016

“           -----Original Message-----

From: George Yerrall <****@riveroakic.com>

To: michaelchild

Sent: Wed, 10 Aug 2016 10:08

Subject: Automatic reply: Manston DCO

I am currently out of the office and will only have intermmittent access to email and to phone service. “    

I assume he must be on holiday. So I forwarded the email to Stephen Denardo, who also appears on both website as CEO and a partner.

As I have had no response or acknowledgement from RiverOak, apart from the out of office, I have no way of knowing if they received my email or intend to reply to it prior to the deadline date of their initial consultation 05.09.2016.

As the CPO process is front loaded and I had hoped to enter into a meaningful dialogue with RiverOak, regarding the aspects of the project that concern me, as I feel that I can give some useful input about at this stage. I am starting this process without a reliable point of contact at RiverOak, so I am sending this information to you in the first instance and I hope you will be able to tell me if it is appropriate for me to then send it to RiverOak.

As a local businessperson and resident there are two aspects to the development of Manston that most concern me.

One being the economic growth and the resultant benefits to my own business.  

The other being the pollution generated by any commercial development on the site and the aspects of this detrimental to the local businesses and community.

I have skimmed through the scooping report and other documents now published at https://infrastructure.planninginspectorate.gov.uk/projects/south-east/manston-airport/ and there are aspects of the environmental strategy about which I would like further clarification prior to completing the informal consultation. 

First my initial questions about noise pollution.

My understanding is that the minimum activity generated by the airfreight hub would be 10,000 airfreight movements a year which equates to approximately 200 movements per week or approximately 30 movements in a 24 hour period.

I am assuming that there is also an optimal amount of freight movements per year, the scooping documents seems to indicate 20,000 per year, there would also presumably be a maximum figure envisaged, although I can’t find it.

Could you please clarify the optimal and maximum number of freight flights?

With respect to night time activity I can only find what appears a maximum of 18 movements per night, with night time being defined as after 23.00 and before 7.00. 

Obviously there is a great deal of information where noise measurement in dB is given, but for a layman this is difficult to interpret and would presumably depend on the sound insulation of the building you were sleeping in and the sound reflecting qualities of the surrounding infrastructure.

Could you please clarify the maximum number of  freight aircraft night movements? 

I am assuming that the aircraft type will be mostly the same as the previous Manston freight activity i.e. 747 series, can you please confirm this?

Can you please clarify how the number of flights, and night flights – detailed separately, relates to the number of people employed, directly and indirectly?

The town most affected by noise pollution will be Ramsgate as it is at the end of the runway, and this pollution can be divided in to daytime noise, mostly affecting production in local business, educational advancement in local schools, the local tourist industry and night time pollution which has roughly similar effects but is generally more damaging.

Ramsgate has nearly 900 listed buildings (one of the highest numbers for any uk town) and a considerable number of other buildings within the Ramsgate conservation area, residences, businesses schools and collages. This includes a number of language collages, which are significant contributors to the local economy.

Under normal circumstances the main mitigation for noise pollution is sound insulation, however with many listed buildings and buildings in conservation areas, effective sound insulation is expensive, difficult and sometimes impossible.

Please can you explain how you have addressed the problem of noise insulation as related to Ramsgate’s large number of listed buildings?

My first initial questions about air pollution.

As you are no doubt aware Thanet has good air quality apart from some isolated areas around road junctions and the background level of particulate air pollution that I mentioned to the environmental expert at the Canterbury consultation session.

Inasmuch as there are likely to be people reading this who hold administrative positions and are not conversance with particulate air pollution, I will first make a short explanation.

Firstly particulate air pollution is a fairly newly discovered problem, related in recent media articles to diesel cars now being a less desirable option. Secondly that collective impacts of multiple air pollutants interact in the atmosphere and impact on health. Thirdly particles associated with particulate pollution are very small and bury themselves deeply in lung tissue, causing reduced life expectancy from stroke, heart disease, lung cancer, and chronic and acute respiratory diseases, including asthma.

Thanet is already presumed to have annual levels of PM2.5s of 11µg/m3, which is above the World Health Organisation guidelines and around the threshold for a measurable related reduction in life expectancy.

The nearest monitoring station is at Southend-on-sea 11µg/m3 and the other monitoring station thought likely to have similar levels is at Eastbourne, which is also recording level of PM10s above WHO guidelines (PM10 21µg/ PM2.5s 15µg/m3)

This is thought to be due to the prevailing wind direction across southern England combined with the proximity of the industrial areas of Europe. PM2.5s are slow to disperse from the atmosphere.

The main sources of particulate air pollutants are Diesel engines, fuel oil and aviation jet engine fuel, a freight aircraft (747 type) movement, takeoff or landing burns one tonne of aviation fuel, the dispersion distance (the distance away from the fuel burn upwind where the particulate level returns to around the background level is around 10 miles for PM10s and further for PM2.5s)

Obviously added to this would be the lorry movements, considerable as Manston has no fuel pipeline.

Margate, Ramsgate and particularly Broadstairs are upwind of Manston in terms of prevailing wind direction. 

Are you planning to monitor particulate air pollution in Thanet prior to planning the number and type of aircraft movements viable at Manston?

Will there be any compensation scheme related to any reduction in life expectancy and serious health due to airport generated particulate air pollution?

Do you have any plans to mitigate the amount of particulate air pollution and its affects in Thanet?

My first initial questions related to water pollution.

Manston sits on top of the Thanet chalk aquifer, which for the layman means, the chalk can be seen like a large sponge, sitting on top of clay which is impervious and surrounded by seawater which holds the freshwater - gathered from the rain falling in Thanet - in place.  Although the water moves up and down freely, it hardly moves sideways at all.

Water is collected for the Thanet water supply by digging a well with a side tunnel under the water level, called an adit. One such adit runs most of the length of Manston runway, deep under the runway. Water sourced from the Manston catchment is also drawn from agricultural boreholes and used untreated for irrigation and food crop washing.

This means that the Manston runway can be considered as sitting on top of one of Thanet’s essential drinking water reservoirs. Thanet's potable (drinkable) water is blend of water from Plucks gutter (river Stour).  Lord of the Manor Source Protection Zone (SPZ) 1 and from the Wingham Well.  It's all then held at the Southern Water works near the Airport.  The Source Protection Zone (SPZ) 2 lies within the Manston site.  Dilution of potable water is becoming less and less available and more expensive, Southern Water and the EA say the Manston aquifer is essential to maintaining the Thanet water Supply.

Manston Runway and the majority of the hard standing was supposed to be drained into the sea at Pegwell Bay. In practice the pipe was a concrete sectional pipe and leaked at every join, meaning that in reality the drainage was into the aquifer south of Manston and dispersed by the pipe. 

At the consultation your environmental spokesperson assured me that the pipe would be lined with plastic.

I would imagine a worst-case scenario would be a spillage (of say 50,000 litres of jet engine fuel) on the grassed part of the site caused an air crash.

Have you in the first instance examined the water source protection safety measures taken at other airports that lie on top of essential drinking water aquifers?

Do you have an air accident fuel spillage a strategy?

Have you factored in the air accident fuel spillage environmental cleanup costs? 

More Manston Airport and the TDC cpo with a bit of a ramble from the bookshop in Ramsgate.

Thanet District Council have started the week by deleting the news item that they put up about RiverOak a couple for weeks ago on their website.

Here is what they have deleted:

"Thanet District Council is currently reviewing its position around whether Riveroak is a suitable indemnity partner for a compulsory purchase order on the Manston Airport site.

This followed a Cabinet decision in July which committed to re-opening discussions with the American firm.

Following a final request for financial evidence promised by Riveroak, Thanet District Council’s solicitors have now reviewed the information submitted by the company on Friday 14 August.

An important part of this process is for the council to seek financial assurances from Riveroak given the significant financial risk of pursuing a CPO by a publicly-funded authority.

Two redacted letters were provided which do not identify the names or addresses of the investors who Riveroak suggest could provide the financial security required.

This approach to providing information in a redacted format is for a local authority, highly unusual and prevents it from being able to gather any financial assurance from it.

As a consequence the council has now asked for confirmation of the bond agreement as detailed in the draft indemnity agreement submitted by Riveroak."

As a local historian I get a bit worried when the council start removing the news.

Anyway here is the Newspeak 

"RiverOak Aviation Associates and Thanet District Council anticipate a number of meetings in the coming weeks, in a variety of formats and venues. We jointly acknowledge there are a number of points to be negotiated and settled prior to indemnity partner status and any CPO, and are agreed these confidential negotiations are best conducted in private. Thus, for a period of at least the next 30 days, updates on progress will be made, as with this statement, in a jointly agreed wording, appearing simultaneously on our websites.

Both participants in the negotiations wish to avoid repeating some of the misunderstandings of recent weeks, and feel this is a significant step forward.

George Yerrall, CEO RiverOak Aviation Associates stated: " both parties agree some serious, and confidential, talks will clarify any confusion and help iron out the difficulties to ensure a successful conclusion...."     Chris Wells, Leader of Thanet District Council added...."I have been calling for calm over recent weeks, and, along with George, hope the campaigners will now respect that request."

This initial statement appears at 10 am in the UK, Monday 7 September; in America Tuesday 8 September due to the Labor Day Holiday."

Here in the bookshop the week started well on the home decorating book front

We usually have more on decorative fabrics (this is from a 1908 book we have in stock on fabric printing, samples of fabric being stuck to most of the pages)

Anyway this morning I bought a small collection of modern book about wallpaper, I should stress here that we are not talking bestsellers here, but if it is obscure enough I will probably want to buy it.

Of course we do have other books on the diy and decorating already,

 this is an interesting example from 1879.

Sorry I guess I have drifted off into the world of bookselling and have lost the thread on the Manston issue. 

Still the real Manston issue seems to be that while a lot of local people appear to want a passenger airport, the council's response of pursuing an airfreight hub there that we can't fly from seems a bit strange. Perhaps a public consultation, who knows.  

A couple of sketches of Herne Bay and Manston and Stone Hill Park and Manston Airport.

you can draw the clock tower at Herne Bay

try to photograph it or just walk away

well it has potential

my first attempt started out too big.

a streetscape from The Pantry is much easier and more relaxed than drawing the clock tower with the traffic whizzing by

The place at Manston, I guess now even what you call it will get someone’s back up, well the issue, where the owners want to build Stone Hill Park http://www.stonehillpark.co.uk/ and various people including a lot of the local politicians want TDC to use cpo powers to buy the land there to turn it into an airfreight hub and aircraft scrapping facility, has gone into overdrive.

I may ramble on here. 

The application for 785 dwellings at Manston and the appointments of senior council officers come before Thanet Council committees next week.

I guess we all know that the government have told councils that more houses have to be built and obviously people need places to live. I think it pretty fair to say that over the next few years several thousand new homes will be built in Thanet.

Of course there is the sort out the empty and derelict properties first augment, the snag here is that they are all owned by different people and many of them would be very expensive to sort out if they could be bought by a developer.

There are also a few large plots in towns, like Pleasurama which has got as far as the foundations on sand stage and the Boundary Road gasworks site which has serious industrial contamination issues.

We then have the building out across open land solution, we have prime farmland and probably need to conserve as much as this as we can, the Manston Airport site where soil is thin on top of the chalk and probably wouldn’t be viable as farmland but it looks like the two property developers RiverOak and Discovery Parks will be thrashing this one out.

The one that comes before the planning committee next week is a development on prime farmland, see http://democracy.thanet.gov.uk/documents/s46423/D04.pdf

The other committee meeting next week is General Purposes and they will probably ok the appointment of the council’s new top financial and legal officers, see http://democracy.thanet.gov.uk/documents/s46526/Appointment%20of%20Interim%20Section%20151%20Officer%20and%20Interim%20Monitoring%20Officer.pdf

I guess there is a sense with both of these committees (reading both documents) that they needn’t be there at all and that they are just there to rubber stamp what has already been decided. But I am mindful that with most of the new committee members lacking experience the council’s radar, while not being completely turned off may be running high enough for something fairly large to pass under it.  

Margate Turner Contemporary, Al Murray, The Intolerant Wife in Broadstairs, Book Recycling in the Bookshop, a Day Orff Ramble and of course Manston

Back in Margate again for a second look at “Self” the exhibition of self portraits, once again an impressive exhibition, I don’t think any of the visitors to it are going to be disappointed. Well apart from a few art critics as always, whose job it is to criticise so they often miss something that just works well, has an atmosphere or whatever it is.

As always with an art exhibition that does it for me, I was just gagging to draw after about an hour of looking at it so a cuppa and a sketch in the gallery café.

Book recycling day today, which is when we take a Volvo estate full of books for recycling.

I should stress that I see pulping as a last resort and first they go in the 5p and 10p per book section in the bookshop, and then in the 5p and 10p overspill section in the bookshop and if that fails then it’s paper pulp.

Only a small amount of books that we bought for stock today, just one pile as you see

I was pleased to get the Al Murray book though, I think he is the only one of our Thanet South PPCs that have produced a book.

On to Broadstairs and lunch at “The Intolerant Wife” all day breakfast for me and very good it was too. Sorry I never seem to remember to photograph the food until after we have started polishing it off.

I was still in sketching mood so another quick sketch in there too.

On the Manston Airport Site front the transcript of what was said at Monday’s meeting is here http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/transport-committee/smaller-airports/oral/17966.html and another document which is a plan for the airport compiled for Costal Airports (Holdings Ltd) has appeared here http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/transport-committee/smaller-airports/written/17731.pdf

The effluent of the affluent

I am still working away at local safety and environmental issues when I would much rather be publishing more local history, the local water pollution issue is very complex and as I understand bits of it I am publishing them here, with supporting documentation when I can.

For a number of years now Manston Airport has posed an unacceptable pollution risk to our drinking water supply and there would appear to be a case for not using it at all.

The problem stems from the fact that the airfield was built as a wartime airfield in 1944 and as such didn’t have to conform to any environmental regulations. I don’t believe that there was ever any intention to use it as a commercial airport after the war.

The main problem being that the surface water from the runways goes into our drinking water reservoir, the secondary problem being that if there is an air crash and fuel spillage on the grass part of the airfield, no mater how good the drainage is for the rest, the fuel will contaminate our reservoir.

The solution that has been arrived at is to put in a drainage system for the runways and other hard standing, that will run directly into Pegwell Bay, which is a world class RAMSAR wetland.

Some relevant links below.

Environment Agency correspondence obtained under the FOA

Further reading

RAMSAR

Free Manston open day

To celebrate 90 the years anniversary of the RAF at Manson there will be an open day this Sunday starting at 10 am

Weather permitting Red Arrows, Spirit of Kent Spitfire and all the other stuff you would expect click here for the pictures of last years open day sorry they scroll sideways I was a bit e-literate as you can see its not one to miss.

EKO

I have just received the following job advertisement and as the China Gateway is in the news at the moment I thought it could be of interest, it’s certainly well paid. Anyone think of a suitable candidate?

Employer: East Kent Opportunities LLP
Location: Maidstone and Thanet
Salary: c. £70,000
Closing date: 2 June
Interviews: 16 June

Job Context

East Kent Opportunities (EKO) LLP is a joint venture vehicle established by Kent County Council and Thanet District Council with a specific focus on the development of a number of sites in the Thanet area namely, Manston Business Park and Eurokent.

Click here for a more detailed description of the post

China Gateway objection.

I have filed an initial objection to the development click here to read objecting to planning applications is something I don’t really know anything about, so how much is valid is a bit of an unknown quantity.

Discussing it in the shop today, someone asked a very pertinent question, how big is the development in old money? If I have worked it out right, phases 1, 2 and 3 cover just under half a square mile.

The environment agency’s comments on the China Gateway development

I have just received the environment agency’s official response to the China Gateway planning application. I hasn’t yet appeared on the TDC planning website so I don’t know if TDC have received it yet, I have published it on the web click here to read it

Something in the water?

I have been doing more research into the China Gateway project and have read more of the hundreds of pages that constitutes the planning application. The there is a lot of talk of phases 1 2 and 3 the map above shows what this means click here for an enlarged version

As far as I understand the land used for phase 1 has been earmarked as an industrial area, I believe what happened was that because of its close proximity to the end of the duel carriageway to London it looked like the obvious site for an industrial estate. Because of this the council decided to override the normal regulations against building on prime farmland.

What I believe no one noticed at the time was that this site is right in the middle of the porous chalk land that holds our drinking water.

I don’t think that any industrial activity should take place on this land there are many reasons but here is just one.

You only have to have one of the thousands of visiting UK or foreign lorry drivers, who doesn’t realise that the drains in the lorry parks discharge into our drinking water supply, wash out a tanker that has contained toxic chemicals there, and the whole area is permanently and irretrievably destroyed as a water source. Click here to read the communications between the environment agency and the architects about this

Drinking water and China Gateway

This map click here to enlarge shows our drinking water sources with the proposed development outlined in red, my 4 main points of concern detailed below.

1 The site is on top of the Manston aquifer, the porous chalk where some of our drinking water is collected from the rainfall above and all of our drinking water is stored.

2 PRCs environmental report (part of the planning application) says that the surface drainage system will discharge into a large soakaway in the porous chalk.

3 PRCs environmental report says that foul drainage chemical, industrial and human sewage will be processed by an onsite plant and that the purified water from this plant will be discharged into the surface drainage system.

4 PRCs environmental report says that maintenance of this plant will be the responsibility of the leaseholders of the business park.
I would appreciate any thoughts particularly any corrections of any aspects of my information that appears wrong.

Aquaphobia

I have just been reading the Environmental Statement for The China Gateway Manston and was interested to notice that it has been prepared by PRC Architects. These are the same chaps who produced the Pleasurama site plans that have certain unusual features click here to see what I mean.

To look at the plans and Environmental Statement copy the application number F/TH/08/0400 ready to paste into the search box and then click here to go to the Thanet planning site.

It’s always nice to know that one is dealing with competent people who follow the environment agency’s strong recommendations when our drinking water supply is involved.

What are you drinking the water or the wave?

Click on the picture to enlarge

Manston airfield, and the agricultural land around it doubles as our drinking water reservoir, you can’t see the water because of geology, the chalk underneath the ground acts as enormous sponge. Not only does this sponge collect the rain water that falls on the land above but our water is pumped there from other sources for storage.

In recent years there have been pollution problems both with oil and fuel from the airport and fertiliser used on the farmland, now the Chinese want to build a huge factory complex on top of this, our drinking water reservoir.

Understandably some people are unhappy about the idea and most of the comment blogwise is going on at Thanet Strife, link on the sidebar, however I thought that this was such an important issue that I should put up a post and add a few thoughts.

There is an added consideration that the Chinese, like any other large employer, take Nissan for example, can simply go elsewhere in the EU, whenever they wish, leaving much of the Western side of Thanet concreted over. If that happens, then it’s easy to imagine a rapid change from industrial to residential development.

So, perhaps we should “Beware of Chinese bearing gifts” as we look for a short term economic gain for Thanet without considering the longer term risks to our quality of life. Jobs at any cost may not be the best solution. What do you think?

Click here for some additional information

Ramsgate and Historical Thanet

I am just getting the local books part of my website up to date and have just published part of this one for the people who can’t get to the shop. It was published in about 1920 I thought the maps were particularly useful and posted them up the other day. If you cant wait for me to get it so you can buy it from my website its already on ebay click here for that. I am afraid the quality of the pictures is not very good, as the original owes much to the potato school of printing. One has to remember that these ephemeral guides were not intended to last, however I am sure you will agree with me that the advertisements alone make preserving it in this way worthwhile. Click here to view the pages.