Good to see my old TV chum John Craven meandering around the Ile de Thanet on today's Countryfile on BBC1. He ended up at Thanet Earth, the new 28 squillion acre greenhouse that's being built out Manston way, which will have its own gas fired power station generating enough electricity for half the homes on the island. Apparently all Thanet Earth will use is the heat and CO2 generated to grow peppers, cucumbers and up to 2.5m tomatoes a week.Given that they'll be employing 100s of locals, and knowing the Thanetian penchant for, er, getting something for nothing, it'll be interesting to see how much, um, 'wastage' they suffer. Still, look on the bright side. With all that fresh fruit and veg floating around the island we may well notice a reduction in the number of chip-munching lard arses wobbling up and down our high streets. That'll certainly be an improvement to our local environment!
Update: I found a detailed, critical assessment of Thanet Earth by somebody revelling in the name of 'Pete the Hat'. Click here to see it.
Click here to watch Thanet Countryfile on BBC iPlayer (until 8 June)
13 comments:
Interesting that after this past week's heavy rain, several roads around the Thanet Earth site were closed due to flooding. Could there be a connection between removing topsoil, all the building and the flooding? Bangladesh suffers dreadful flooding due to the deforestation of the Himalayan region. Could we be next?
Do these intensive sald growing things cause problems with contaminated water because of the fertilisers etc? I know the area of southern spain is covered in them because of similar EU grants and I thought I had heard of problems from such intensive plastic covered areas. I will have to look into it. I'm sure they will be employing highly paid locals...yeah right!
Where will the bees go?
The big problem in Southern Spain is that so many chemicals are used that many of the workers, mainly Moroccans, have health concerns. Change the area to Thanet and the migrant workers....
Additionally the enormous glasshouses (actually plastic) can be seen for miles and we even saw them from the air when flying in to Malaga. Definitely a blot on the landscape.
John craven, a safe pair of hands.
I think we do need some sort of review about what is allowed to go on over our underground drinking water reservoir. I also think that the way we protect the small amount of undeveloped Thanet should be an important issue.
Everytime we have a scorcher and 5 million people are shown on the front page of the Sun decending on Brighton beach to sit on stones I laugh. Here we are with lots of sand, thats the soft stuff Londoners, nice beaches and plenty of space and people want to go to Brighton (and Hoveactually.....its a local joke there) which takes an hour to get into on a bank holiday. No one here yet said well done to those people who have worked to improve our beaches as mentioned on Countryfile(probably because we're British and like to moan).
Just a thought but as this will be a purely hydroponic operation:
1. Where will all the water come from
2. What have they done with all the topsoil?
Thanet Earth? More like Thanet Watery Toms if you ask me.
Our local water supply already has a very high level of nitrates in it - higher than EU recommended maximum, higher than US legal maximum but just below EU legal maximum.
Just ask Southern Water for the latest test reports - they're obliged to provide you with one.
Expected water consumption is 493,968 m³ per year. Rainfall collected from the roof surfaces comes to 290,700 m³ per year. Allowing for 20% evaporation and other losses, this leaves a shortfall of 261,408 m³. 61,000 m³ will be obtained from underground sources, the remainder by abstraction from nearby marshes.
That should raise the salt levels nicely for whats left of the arable land in Thanet.
I have a splendid idea for the rotten fruit...Monkton has some stocks near the church we can put the weak government planners in that?
Malcolm
Picking up on Malcolm's point about the stocks - there are some in St Peter's as well. Don't see why the villagers of Monkton should have all the fun!
Nick, Whits
All this nonsense about whats left of the arable land, Thanet doesn't end at Birchington people, theres loads of land out to St. Nicholas and round to Sandwich this side of the Wansum and Stour. Maybe if some of you lard arses got off them and went and had a look there'd be less fat people in Thanet.
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