THE ENVIRONMENT
Pollution
and politics
BARBARA MAUDE
So they are actually going to ban sonic booms at last! The new White Paper The Protection of the Environment (Cmd 4373) says so. But—in case you hadn't noticed— Concorde's test flights are going to take place up and down the west coast just the same: Mintech's idea of fun, presumably. This is the sort of contradiction in terms which makes a nonsense of this White Paper.
European Conservation Year in this coun- try has been distinguished so far by a series of the most damaging landscape decisions on record—the Dartmoor reservoirs, the flooding of 3000 acres of Rutland and the Chiltern scarp motorway. Can it be that this White Paper has been rushed out in a belated attempt to convince conservationists, who must by now be more disillusioned than anyone, that something is actually being done? If so, it is a great pity that the writers of the various sections didn't read each each others' pieces—and that none of them seems to be on speaking terms with the Ministry of Transport, which has also just published a document, Roads for the Future (Crnd paper 4369).
Take a look at the section on pollution of the air. After admitting that there is a shortage of solid smokeless fuel (but not that this is due to Lord Robens's house- keeping) it announces that 'some unprofit- able older gas works will be specially kept in operation'. But are not these precisely the sort of obsolete plant which themselves create pollution?
Then, derelict land. Bigger grants are promised for its reclamation. Fine—until you realise that the official definition of dereliction is so narrow as to exclude some of the worst cases from any grant aid what- ever. Meantime, the creation of fresh dere- liction by extractive industries goes on vir- tually unchecked; and many well-meaning attempts to reclaim are thwarted by their unforeseen side-effects on other aspects of the ecology. At Didcot power station, for example, they are going to have a vast amount of fly-ash to get rid of, so they decided to pipe it as 'slurry' to the gravel pits at Standlake. These are a disgrace to the landscape and everyone would like to see them filled. But it has now been discovered that slurrying may allow toxfc elements in the ash to leach into the water system, so it will have to be transported by road instead. This will increase still further the volume of noise, fumes, congestion and erosion of the countryside from which the locality is already suffering—not to mention the fact that the wretched stuff will all blow about en route.
Or consider, again, the chapter on water and the proposal to spend more on main sewage schemes. Splendid—everyone would rather pull the plug than cope with an earth closet; but this has nothing whatever to do with the provision of a pure water supply. On the contrary the earth closet, which re- turns all solids to the soil and allows liquids to re-enter the river system only after natural filtering, is, ecologically speaking, sound. What is fouling up our rivers is in- dustrial effluent (which the White Paper does little to put right) and the products of modern sewage plant. Much new housing development is actually being held up, not because of shortage of funds but because the river authorities are beginning to say they cannot accept any more effluent in the rivers. No mention of this in the White Paper; nor of the fact that the more polluted the rivers become the more the boards feel impelled to abstract from the headwaters, thus further reducing the flows and the rivers' capacity to deal with foreign matter. And, of course, every house built, every acre covered with hardcore, reduces by so much more the catchment and increases the run- off—a perfect recipe for alternating floods and drought. This completes the vicious circle.
Of course, we can't go back to earth closets, but surely a White Paper, if it is worth publishing at all on these subjects, should be able to report in detail on the findings of the relevant working party set up in 1969 to look at methods of sewage treatment. At present we are pouring a potential source of wealth and fertility into our rivers and seas instead of setting tech- nology to work to making use of it.
And talking of run-off brings me to Roads for the Future. Here we have the assumption that more and more miles can be sealed over for roads, thus intensifying the water problem; and the further assump- tion that car ownership, which is estimated to be going to increase by 81 per cent, can actually be accommodated at this level, although the paper on environment devotes several paragraphs to the need to reduce the present level of noise and air pollution by vehicles. Even apart from the fact that the present regulations, especially for diesel- fuelled lorries, seem quite unenforceable, is it really sense to go ahead with making the existing situation worse without at least
drawing the public's attention to the inevit- able results of what is being planned?
This document does, however, read as though its writers had paid some attention to the criticisms sent in on the recent Green Paper; for example, its commitment to 'use derelict land wherever possible;' and its ad- mission that there are such things as areas of historic importance. But it is difficult to feel, after reading the environment paper, that any serious thought, which must result in serious political action, is going on at all—except for the implication that what- ever is done must cost more. Even this is not invariably true. We are doing a lot of things which are simultaneously expensive and destructive—from Concorde to factory farming; and we seem besotted with the idea that natural resources can be exploited for ever. They can't; they are scarce and shrinking and we should be husbanding them with the utmost care. But no breath of this appears anywhere in this paper.
'Miles from a road and on a bus route' was how the elderly lady described her ideal country cottage to the house agent. This about describes the mentality behind these publications.
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