Representation by Deborah Walsh
- Date submitted
- 7 September 2018
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
The claims of those proposing a busy cargo hub are willfully ignorant of the facts on the UK's air pollution crisis so they clearly don't have the capacity to run this project.
In the UK, NO2 pollution alone is linked to the premature deaths of more than 20,000 people in the UK, EVERY YEAR.
Additionally the World Health Organisation warns that NO2, at the concentrations currently measured across Europe, is linked to both asthma in children and reduced lung function in adults.
Furthermore they mix their claims about emissions and their impact, demonstrating a complete lack of scientific awareness to ignore the fact that NOx is a generic term covering various nitrogen oxide air pollutants, including nitric oxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2). The whole consultation was filled with misleading claims about the environmental and health impacts that their proposal will have on the local communities, countryside and biodiversity. Their ridiculous excuse for an environmental impact report should be rejected.
Manston Airport is and will never be environmentally nor economically viable. Councillors and those in positions of power should be finally honest about this.
It would be hellish living in Ramsgate and I would feel forced to uproot my family once again in order to get away if plans go ahead. But not before I galvanise huge support via a nationwide petition to form a human chain around Manston to physically prevent this airport from ever opening a cargo airport.
The impact on my and my family’s quality of life will be huge. The noise levels will be unbearable, especially as River Oak S Partnership RSP identify a capacity for 83,000 freight air traffic movements (ATM’s) annually and suggest ‘worse case’ 17,000 pa. This would mean over 46 flights per day every day of the year but moreover RSP propose no enforceable cap on the number of ATMs so it could be even more. Ramsgate has over 40,000 inhabitants and is very close to Manston airport, less than 1 mile away. When the airport was open it was hugely disturbing when I heard (and saw) the noisy cargo planes flying so incredibly low over the centre of town. You could read something written on the airplanes they flew so low, which had such incredibly intrusive noise levels. Conversations stopped, lessons stopped, parties stopped because of the intrusion. Back then, this happened once or twice a day. The possibility of upwards of 46 flights per day would literally be unbearable. To allow that level of intrusion into one’s life would impact hugely on the quality of people’s lives and I would suggest it breaches a human right to live in peace. To avoid this one would have to move away. I love living in Ramsgate and I do not want to uproot my family, but I will have no choice. But of course there will be a mass exodus and property prices will plummet, so I will not be able to get parity in another town for the quality of my home. What’s more, Ramsgate is a long neglected seaside town that has huge deprivation. Recent years have seen the gradual regeneration of this town into a thriving community and it has become a growing tourist destination. I honestly believe re-opening the airport in this manner will kill this town as it will be an unbearable place to live and holiday in. Furthermore RSP’s noise level predictions do not reconcile with past airport operations official noise measurements (see Council’s website) during operations of a much smaller airport. They are also inconsistent with CAA noise measurement of the first 17 months of Boeing 787 operations at Heathrow, where readings which were further away than Ramsgate were not less than 90 SEL dBA, so higher than RSP predict. Furthermore the local authority engaged an independent noise Expert in 2010, who concluded that “the populations predicted to be within the 85 dB(A) contour by such departures ranges from 14,722 [people] for MD11 departures, up to 30,903 for the Boeing 747-400”. The applicant used a technical standard intended for an airport already operating rather (which Manston isn’t) than the DfT WebTAG standard and did confess to basing some figures on lower flight numbers than their suggested 18 times per night. I mean, 18 times per night! There would be no escape or let-up from this hideous noise. Everyone, including children, my children, will have their sleep disrupted by this. This will lead to decreased quality of their academic performance when studying and this will have a direct impact on their life chances. Further impact on quality of life is the fact that in the UK, NO2 pollution alone has been linked to the premature deaths of 24,500 people EVERY YEAR! With 90% of Britain’s urban areas experiencing illegal levels of NO2 pollution since 2010. The World Health Organisation classified NO2 as a carcinogen and it’s linked to asthma in children, lung cancer and cardiovascular illness. If children’s developing lungs are affected the damage is life-limiting. It is astonishing that a firm trying to demonstrate its ability to run an airport can be so wilfully ignorant of the facts on the UK’s air pollution crisis, stating the proposed development including airport related traffic will be “small”, “slight” or even “negligible”. On the contrary, RSP’s plans would counteract urgent plans to tackle the current air quality problems in the UK.