The River Blackwater Valley Action Group

www.enablers.biz/bwvag

bwvag@enablers.biz

Dear Mr Shuker,

Re: Adjournment Debate – House of Commons, 20^th January 2006

Are the Highways Agency responsible for briefing Ministers on current projects?  If so, you will probably understand the astonishment and anger felt by many local residents to learn that during last week’s Adjournment Debate triggered by our MP brooks Newmark, the Minister of State twice claimed that the A120 Braintree-Feering PSR would be the least environmentally damaging to the River Blackwater special landscape area.  Hopefully you and your team will be able to dispel such an impression before it takes root and prejudices a proper consideration of the difficult choices ahead:

• The Minister should be made aware that the Highways Agency and its consultants chose not to investigate the Stage One route which Essex CC had identified as the least environmentally damaging?  On the grounds, we understand, that your ‘strategic’ clients in the road haulage industry would use less fuel if you could provide them with a straight East-West route cutting through the countryside, rather than dog-legging South East to join the A12 South of Kelvedon.
• Another route favoured by some locally – also not investigated by the HA prior to public consultation – would involve “on-line” improvements (piecemeal maybe rather than in a single £2/300 million mega-project) with quality bypasses for the villages along the route.  The environmentally preferred option is always to improve existing roads rather than build new ones.
• As most of the current A120 is in the SLA, it may be technically correct that the PSR would go through less of the SLA , but in the real world:
  • it would involve the largest land-take
  • and adding a whole new road through virgin countryside and devastating for ever the beautiful Blackwater Valley (also in the SLA) should surely not be presented as having a “less adverse affect environmentally”?
• Also, is the Minister aware that the initial TAR and EAR did not actually involve HA consultants having seen the Blackwater Valley? As we pointed out during the public consultation, the TAR under-estimates the size of the floodplain in the Blackwater Valley, where the river is able to flood up to 400 metres – not 100 as North of the A120 – thus reducing flood risk to nearby villages.  In the real world, therefore, the PSR would require a bigger bridge across the valley (with resulting visual, noise and air pollution in this unspoilt and tranquil area) and/or building in the floodplain.  To imply that this is in any way environmentally OK beggars belief, and we hope that we can rely on your own objectivity and understanding to correct this as you proceed with the A120 project.

Finally thank you for sending representatives from Hyder to the recent presentation by the Essex Wildlife Trust of the first bits of their findings.  The Blackwater Valley Action Group www.enablers.biz/bwvag exists to protect this beautiful part of rural Essex, and their attendance was much appreciated.

I am copying this to our local MP, Brooks Newmark, who came to the EWT presentation and is most concerned about how this project has been handled.

With best wishes

Andrew A. Napier

c.c. Mr Brooks Newmark, MP