Wildlife and conservation review 2002
The consultation process has itself been tortuous - many options were put forward as part of the
initial consultation, but expansion at Gatwick was not. After a High Court challenge, the Government
was required to introduce this additional option, and launched a further round of consultation in
2003. Fortunately, although much speculated upon, this second consultation did not include additional
options such as a possible offshore airport off the Maplin Sands.
Ports
It has long been recognised that the UK economy needs ports, and that the current capacity, especially
for container vessels, is likely to be fully utilised in the not-too-distant future. As a result, several
major proposals to satisfy this need are now coming forward. One - ABP's proposals for Dibden
Bay, on Southampton Water - is outside our area: its year-long Public Inquiry ended in late 2002.
Two others are within Essex - Hutchison Ports' plans for Bathside Bay, on the Stour, between
Harwich and Parkeston, and P&O's London Gateway project at Shellhaven. Each of these plans
will have major impacts on wildlife and habitats of European significance, and the conservation
sector maintains that all three are not needed - this would lead to overprovision, inconsistent with
EU Habitats Directive. If this view is accepted, then it is difficult to see how Government can give
permission for any of the proposals until it has heard all the cases through Public Inquiry, so it can
determine which may be considered to be in the national interest. Furthermore, the decision is
made rather difficult by the absence of an effective national ports policy
London Gateway is the largest of the three. It involves port development on part of the former
Shellhaven oil refinery (now decommissioned, decontaminated and supporting brownfield
biodiversity), but also significantly on some 80ha of claimed Thames intertidal and subtidal.
Associated with it is a proposal for a major warehousing and distribution centre on the remainder
of the former refinery. Environmental impacts include: effects on protected and other species using
the current site (Badgers, Great Crested Newts, Black Redstarts, Water Voles etc); disturbance to
birds using the adjacent grazing marshes; but worst of all, serious impacts on estuarine mudflats
(especially the northern part of Mucking Plats, well known for its wintering Avocets, Black-tailed
Godwits, Dunlin, Redshank and Shelduck). The impacts will arise primarily indirectly, through
loss of intertidal due to changes the tidal regime, and changes to existing intertidal resources through
the accelerated rates of sedimentation predicted as resulting from construction activities. Some of
the issues can be addressed through mitigation and habitat creation, but the SPA bird interest cannot
be mitigated. In this respect, P&O are proposing to create two areas of new intertidal land, in
Thurrock and north Kent, by way of compensation. The Thurrock site poses few problems - it is
arable land. But the Kent site is managed under the North Kent Marshes Environmentally Sensitive
Area scheme and already has some significant wildlife value, so to convert it to intertidal through
managed realignment will itself require mitigating. Also interesting to note is that the proposed
habitat replacement in Kent lies under the footprint of the proposed Cliffe airport! All these issues,
and many more, were explored in the Public Inquiry which ran from February to September 2003.
The plan for Bathside Bay is that it will form a 'natural1 eastward extension of Harwich International
Port, involving the complete land claim (65ha) of that part of the Bay which survived previous
episodes of land take. This proposal has a very long history: the idea of the Bay as a port has been
around ever since the mid-19th century, not that this should have any bearing on the decision. Work
in support of scheme identified Bathside Bay as being of comparable value to the rest of the Stour
Estuary for water birds (Je of national and international importance), so in April 2003, English
Nature notified it as an SSSI. It is expected that designation as an SPA by Defra will follow. However,
notification makes no difference to this case, as the developers have, much to their credit, treated
Bathside Bay as though it were SSSI/SPA all along. They have also readily accepted the impacts
Essex Naturalist (New Series) 20 (2003)
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