Paul Outhwaite has been leading our campaign tackle the threat of a new airport in the Thames estuary ... here he reflects on the latest output from the Airports Commission:
As nails in coffins go the reports from the Airports Commission looking at the feasibility of building an airport in the Thames Estuary are both long and being hammered home pretty firmly.
The Environmental Impact Report clearly outlined both the massive cost and the potential for failure of any attempt to compensate for the largest ever deliberate destruction of wildlife habitat the UK has even seen.
The latest batch of Airports Commission Reports come on top of the Environmental Impact Report and one report, Operational Feasibility and Attitudes to Moving an Airport, looks at everything from the risks posed by birdstrike, nearby gas terminals and unstable munitions to the pure impracticality of effectively moving an airport the size of Heathrow overnight. Taken together, these new risk adds exponentially to the massive costs and huge uncertainties of building an airport in the Thames Estuary – on top of the environmental risks and costs.
Other reports look at socio-economic issues socio-economic issues and surface access surface access. Even where the reports might indicate potential benefits, most if not all conclusions go on to stress the considerable level uncertainty around those benefits ever being delivered – and none say it’s going to be cheap.
Since the very first mention of siting an airport in the Thames Estuary, the RSPB has highlighted many reasons why one should never be built. Independent consultants have now endorsed our views and added many of their own concerns. The concept now appears to be unrealistic, impractical, risk-laden and massively expensive: it should never fly. The one and only conclusion is that the idea should be dropped and forgotten about forever.
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