A dismal legacy
A letter to the Leigh Times from Peter Wycherley, Leigh (21/04/2009)
Picture a bleak and desolate post-industrial landscape: barren spoil heaps and rusting winding-gear, or dilapidated redundant docklands. That is what your shiny new venture - the airport - will resemble in less than 50 years time, unless it becomes possible to power aircraft by solar panels, or by nuclear fusion.
What a dismal and unpropitious legacy for the next generation! Is it possible that business concerns that can afford to fund this misguided scheme do not have the imagination to devise a more sustainable enterprise that would be of long-term benefit to the local and to the wider community, rather than gambling valuable resources on the future of air travel, when clearly it does not have one?
If that really is the case, may I suggest that they give their money directly to struggling local businesses and to persons in greatest need? That would be a much more productive investment in our future than the proposed expansion of the airport.
More media coverage can be found on the Media page.
LATEST NEWS:
- JAAP Consultation Phase 2 analysis now available
- 2008 CO2 emissions for Southend Airport are now available
- Echo, 25th May: Council chiefs to oppose airport expansion hopes
- Leigh Town Council's position
Insist that they respond to you in writing.
About SAEN
SAEN was formed to campaign against the runway extension at Southend Airport.
We are not anti Southend Airport, but we are against an extension to the runway at Southend Airport that would dramatically increase the number of flights over Southend. We are a campaign group of concerned residents opposed to the extension of the runway at Southend Airport rather than a Southend Airport protest group.
What is there to worry about?
An extended runway at Southend Airport could mean:
- A plane low over your house every 5 minutes at busy times
- 30 freight flights a night
- A huge increase in noise and air pollution
- Even more traffic on our congested roads
- Eastwoodbury Lane closed
- A number of people losing their homes
- The value of everyone else's homes falling, putting even more people into negative equity
- Very few new jobs being created
- Passenger forecasts are unrealistic, making the airport expansion an expensive waste of everyone's time.
- Public Safety Zones appear not to be taken seriously
- An increase in harmful greenhouse gas emissions
You can now find out how to contact your Councillors and MPs on the Take Action page.
If I may suggest, the point we must keep plugging about the runway extension is the fact that the N.W. extension of runway 15/33 was refused by the government inspectorate in 1966 on environmental grounds, not many people remember that and the Council would probably want to conceal this fact anyway.