Thames Estuary Airport, no thanks.

It’s forty years since proposals to create London’s (then) third airport in the Thames stimulated the conservation movement to get its act together and start to gather the data that has become the bedrock of campaigns to protect some of our best places for wildlife from damage.  The Birds of Estuaries Inquiry became part of today's Wetland Bird Survey

Then it was a site off the Essex coast at Maplin Sands.  Forty years on and the engineer’s plans and schematics are sketching another Thames airport, further out but potentially home to six runways and associated infrastructure pushing fingers of development into the coast’s of both Essex and Kent.

This is the so called ‘Boris Island’ – the proposals driven by the Mayor of London have spawned much ridicule but continue to attract the attention of serious-minded people.  It is too easy to dismiss such an initiative as outlandish and fanciful, too easy to lampoon it as yet another opportunity for trough-snouted consultants to spend years revising the costs, impacts and uncertainties upwards to a point where the project collapses under the weight of its sheer unsustainability.

In many ways, this proposal takes the Greater Thames back to an earlier era of unnecessary conflict.  In recent years, there has been a welcome and refreshing culture of working with the grain of nature.  The London Array, the London Gateway port, the Thames Gateway with its innovative Parkland programme are just some examples. 

We at the RSPB are proud of our massive contribution to delivering a pathway to a sustainable Thames and proud of our projects on the coasts of Kent and Essex.  Central to all of this has been a clear recognition of the importance of the Thames, its internationally important wildlife and the clear legal protection that comes form the European Birds and Habitats Directives, you can read about some of work here.

The feasibility study eventually stumbled into the public gaze yesterday, but its ‘Can we build it? Yes we can!’ message had been well trailed.  We will respond, and we will respond in detail.  That it can be built is not and never has been the issue, critically is it the right thing to do?  The wrecks of airport proposals are scattered around the Thames, repeatedly this special place has been rejected as a site for an airport.  We will vigorously oppose this latest airport concept. 

The last airport proposal was at Cliffe in North Kent, it was only 7 years ago and the memories are fresh in the communities that would have been affected – the opposition to this concept is considerable and will grow as the full implications of the scheme become apparent, that is a strong reason for hope.

The timing of this proposal, as Government’s focus on Copenhagen, is at best unfortunate.  The Thames is the wrong place, but as we all grapple with the challenge of climate change this is most assuredly the wrong time to be proposing a six runway airport.