Tuesday 18 September 2012

Thames Estuary Man-made Coastal Reserve

That's how this huge and splendid new initiative is being billed (duck-billed?) but don't get any hopes up that today's launch of this project will mean that the Estuary Airport ideas are thus undermined. It's actually at Wallasea Island in Essex, some ten or more kilometres north of the area where such an airport would be built.

Yes, it's still close enough to add a fraction more risk of dangers such as bird strike, and no doubt would require a trimming of some flight/stacking paths, but I doubt it'd be sufficiently material to make any difference in the aviation decision-making process. It's still a very welcome project, though, so well done to all who brought this into being!

Meanwhile, also in the news today, the Deputy Mayor of London, Victoria Borwick, is coming for talks with the leader of Medway Council and the Director of Regeneration (and other matters) on the very topic of the estuary (or similar) airport, for which there are now no fewer than three distinct proposals publicly known – and, for all I know, others still being prepared, though possibly not. This will be in about ten weeks from now.

Councillor Chambers and Mr Cooper have promised to be "robust" in their dealings with the Deputy Mayor, and they plan to take her on a little tour of the Hoo Peninsula so that it will not be possible for her to claim to be unaware of the true nature of the impact such an airport would have. This is politically astute on Medway's part, and the visit could well become a defining moment in the area's dealings with regard to this ten-year-old threat that still hasn't (yet) gone away.

I think it might have to, after the Deputy Mayor's visit, but we shall see...

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