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.

Pegwell Bay pictures this morning oh yes June

I put an 80 x 2010 zoom lens on after a bit didn’t have very long to take the pictures as I dropped the children off in Ramsgate at 8.30 for a school trip and had to be back to open the shop for 9.30.

The rest of the pictures are at http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/610/id17.htm I obviously need some practice with this lens, I haven’t used it much for about 20 years and it is all a bit manual as you can see from the picture above.

Pegwell cliff top evening walk a few pictures 14th July 2010

This is from my mobile so I won’t attempt to enhance the pictures, in fact I can’t really look at them properly until they have published to the internet.

Once again this is very much a post for people who can’t get out for a walk here for one reason or another, I suppose for most people there will be far too many of them so I will apologise for the quantity now and get it over with.

Here are the links to the pictures.

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop610/id5.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop610/id6.htm

http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop610/id7.htm

I expect it will be some time before they all appear on the web.

Seals in Pegwell Bay on Video.

A look at the male seal population in Pegwell Bay. The trip was lead by Horizon Sea Safari's of Ramsgate, and skipper John Brooks who talks about the seals here... October 2009

Ed, many thanks to Tom Betts of Your Thanet for this interesting video, it’s easy to forget the significance of the wildlife in Pegwell Bay when looking at local pollution issues.

I am reminding people that the main runway at Manston Airport still hasn’t got fuel interceptors on much of its hard standing and the main runway as far as I know.

What this means is that a major fuel spillage at the airport would probably end up in Pegwell Bay and kill the seals.

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.

Pegwell Bay Landfill Site

Does anyone know the answer to this one?

Thanet Offshore Wind would like to investigate the possibility of using the route of the cycle path that runs through the nature reserve at Pegwell Bay, as a cable route for the export cables from the offshore wind farm. The export cables at present are due to be buried under the A256 from the landfall at Pegwell Bay to the disused power station at Richborough.

It was appreciated that the initial attempt of putting traffic controls on this road in October, in order to start the work caused traffic chaos and we would like to try and avoid a repetition.

As the nature reserve was a landfill site, we would like to try and ascertain the extent of the landfill site and whether the present day cycle path passes over any of the old landfill areas, which would naturally cause problems with the cable burial.

If anyone has any knowledge of the extent of the landfill site, or has any detailed maps we would be very interested to hear from them.

Geoff Riches

Marine Supervisor

Thanet Offshore Wind Ltd.

Phone 01843 572133

geoff.riches@thanetoffshorewind.com

Manston Airport V China Gateway

I was interested to see the plans for the airport expansion http://www.kentinternationalairport-manston.com/masterplan.html you may remember back in August I posted their letter about this and how it conflicts with China Gateway sorry that it’s difficult to read http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/drink/id40.htm once again though the main question is why haven’t the safety issues been addressed, before proceeding? My own interest here is protection of the water supply see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/drink/ they have been avoiding resolving this issue since June 2006 see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/blog/id4.htm

Now at the moment as activity at Manston increases the risk of pollution both of Pegwell Bay and our water supply increases with it, it must be time for TDC to commission a proper assessment of these risks and have a contingency plan for a pollution incident.

If they can’t find a workable solution to a major pollution incident i.e. if we don’t have sufficient alternative water supply for both our agriculture and our drinking water then neither project can be allowed to go ahead without major changes .

Personally I think the airport is wrongly situated like Port Ramsgate it can never compete with the competition because of its remote geographical location, the risk here is a failed airport and an irreversibly damaged water supply.

The picture of the airport comes from one of my publications Twilight of Pistons http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/tp/

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.