After years of campaigning and DIY action we have finally succeeded in forcing the Council to appoint a biodiversity officer. One of the problems in persuading the Council not to do daft things, or even to do good things, has been the absence of anyone with any understanding of ecology in both the parks department and planning. It is around 20 years since the Council employed an ecologist! Whilst the appointment of an experienced biodiversity officer (Kate Mitchell) will not put an end to bad planning decisions or parks faux pars it does offer hope that in future major projects like the Clissold lottery works will be a lot more bioD wise.

This appointment and related new officers in parks (Head of Parks – John Wade, and Parks Development officers – Sam Parry, Bruce Irving and Eleanor Johnson) results largely from huge embarrassment caused when Hackney Parks Forum (HPF is the independent voice of park user groups) appeared at the Council's Scrutiny Committee 2 years ago and identified major gaps in LBH environmental cover (e.g. Hackney is one of only 2 London Councils still without a Biodiversity Action Plan).

Considerable work is done in the borough to protect and improve biodiversity but this is almost exclusively led by volunteers and is frequently undermined by bad council decision making and practise. Do not expect everything to change over night but not only is there hope for a better biodiversity future this appointment proves we can make a difference even inside the Council bureaucracy.

Hackney have released the results of the public consultation about the idea of a wind turbine in the East Marshes and people seem keen... 87% of the 712 respondents supported the idea, and the same proportion supported it who lived in the immediate vicinity as elsewhere in the borough.

The council will now move on to the planning application stage, which will involve more, more technical consultation, and a full Environmental Impact Asssessment.

http://www.hackney.gov.uk/windturbine.htm

I've just posted Hackney and Tower Hamlets FoE's recent consultation responses for interest. One to Hackney's Housing Strategy, and one to the London Plan.

I hear that City Hall is meant to be published a Climate Change and Energy strategy for consultation soon. It should be really interesting, and may have significant implications for boroughs - particularly if it specifies annual carbon emissions reductions targets...

To quote the BBC website, verbatim:

Monthly forecasting

The weather beyond about a week ahead stretches even the most experienced weather

forecaster. Complex numerical weather forecast models from the Met Office and the

European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) are run many times for

the month (and season) ahead to build up a picture of the likelihood of different weather

types affecting the UK.

So, when your 'government' or 'industry', either national or local tells you that they are going to mitigate, you may reply 'mitigate what, exactly?' If there are man-created instabilities we don't know exactly what they will bring, a good reason to rachet back all our economic nonsense. However, if we manage to break the Atlantic conveyor and our winters start getting really cold (this year is nothing much, think Moscow), this may solve some of our problems for us.

The season's winter work began in earnest this weekend with dedicated environmental do gooders doing good in Wick Wood and on Hackney Downs. On Sat a hard core of HMUG veterans built a stylish 'S' shaped 50m dead hedge in a clearing in the woods. Plenty more sustainable housing for wood mice, wrens, mini beasts and fungi. A lovely mild sunny morning made the work much more like play.
Then today TMs were out on the Downs planting hornbeam and native black poplars and filling in gaps in a hedge with dogwood and buckthorn. The black pops were grown at the community tree nursery on the marshes from cuttings taken in Wick Woodland in 2005. Around 40 of these rare native trees have been planted in Hackney in the last 5 years. If you know a space big enough for a really big tree we still have about 30 in the nursery looking for good homes.

To find out more or get involved visit the TM and HMUG website at: http://www.hackneyenvironment.org.uk/

A ugly picture is beginning to emerge of what the LDA (London Development Authority) are planning as 'legacy' in the so called post-Olympic 'park'. Neo-con insanity necessitates the inevitability of yet another property development scam but on Monday (9/11) I discovered a detail that helps bring it all into perspective. In making various calculations about where to site wind turbines the busy Olympics brains have worked out that the NW corner of East Marsh is the only possible place, chiefly because regulations require it must be at least 250m from any housing. A combination of the illegal St. Teresa Terrace housing estate on Main Marsh, requiring its own 250m exclusion area, and air flow to the other turbine at Eton Manor make the NW corner of East Marsh the only place left. When I enquired why the turbine could not go elsewhere on the Olympic site (i.e. south of the A12) I was told there was so much housing planned for the site there is NOWHERE that will be 250m from a flat!
So the sustainable, green, games and legacy park just means another massive residential development. Hackney will apparently get back a modest park (the size of London Fields, says LBH 2012 officer) for the destruction of Arena Field, White Heart Field, St Theresa Terrace and other encroachments. Whilst the vast bulk of the Olympics site will be more concrete boxes of unsustainable housing. Sure there will be some greenwash, e.g. better than average energy efficiency, and it will all be sold (in every sense of the word) as essential to meet the demand for housing. But the same dishonest greed that gave us the sub-prime banking catastrophe is feeding this whole game. The real housing crisis is in over crowded B&Bs, privatised council stock and increasingly on the streets. None of those people will be re-housed in the profit led orgy that will be the Olympic legacy. What is more none of the well paid LDA/ODA/LBH engineers, bureaucrats and consultants or the aspiring politicians bother to analyse anything long enough to realise they are stoking the boiler of another berserk carbon frenzy. The Olympic games will cost 4m tonnes of CO2 and that excludes the legacy development. People need to believe there is some hope so after the great New Labour fraud of 1997 and 30 years of corrupt, free market, capitalist ideology even the propaganda can be out sourced. Atomised individuals lying to themselves, constructing personalised justifications for whatever they can get, desperate to believe its OK.
So if you want some hope amidst the reality of environmental mass suicide, don't construct threadbare rationalisations to fill the gaping holes in the lies they keep telling you. Get out and do something positive. Plant a tree, feed a bird or hug a friend in need. We are our only hope but only when we start thinking and acting for ourselves, our communities and our planet is there any chance of avoiding climate disaster. Trust me, it may be a painful journey but you will feel much better.

Thanks to a very poorly attended consultation event at the Town Hall this evening (9 members of the public) I think I now understand why East Marsh was chosen as the location for the 2nd Olympic turbine (another is to be built at Eton Manor in Waltham Forest). Evidently 'our' turbine will not be operational before Nov 2013, too late for the Olympics; but it must be within the Olympic site to satisfy a planning condition for Olympic legacy renewable energy. East Marsh is deemed to be inside the Olympic site even though it is supposed to come back to Hackney in 2013.
The turbine cannot go elsewhere in the Olympic site because the plan is for so much residential development in the legacy 'park' that anywhere else would be too close to housing (I think 250m is the exclusion zone). That should give a fair idea of the sort of park it will be. It cannot go elsewhere on East Marsh because it would interfere with wind flow to the Eton Manor turbine.
So the raison d'etre is to comply with a planning condition for 20-35% (the figure seems to vary) renewable energy for the legacy development. However the ODA/LDA now say they may not need the turbine to achieve this figure so Hackney gets to decide whether or not it goes ahead. So it's an Olympics turbine that's not an Olympics turbine. Still with me?
Carefully sifting through Charlie Foreman's spin (LBH 2012 officer) it appears the site of the turbine has been moved away from the Old Lea river, further into East Marsh, because of concerns raised in bat and bird surveys commissioned by the ODA. I think I persuaded Mr. Foreman and those present from the ODA to make public those surveys.
Other data gathered: it's a 2kw turbine, will take 9 months to repay its carbon build (it's 120m of steel on a big concrete platform); some other output data went over my head/wasn't explained.
I did however learn the Olympics carbon footprint, excluding legacy developments, is 4m tonnes!
Consultation ends 14 December.

Well, with the sacking of the drugs advisor we see a certain pragmatic absurdity (big tobacco and big alcohol are fantastic revenue earners and a large slice of what we jokingly call 'industry') creep into government's thinking. Science yes, but not if it involves (makes quote gesture) 'evidence' and 'independent thought'.

Why does this matter so much to environmental activism? Well most of the descriptions of the current problems, likely outcomes and remedies are science-based.They are not based on what would suit us (although I suspect that life without cars might be rather pleasant) or pragmatic/political deals with the devil or (our current political/industrial posture) greenwash and tokenism. We're going to actually have to do something and measure it.

Russell, I'm surprised you're so concerned with land ownership between two arms of government! National government is committed to the 2012 Olympics and has acted to bring that about by creating the ODA etc; LB Hackney is another level of government and shares the same aim.

I favour the substitution of non-renewable energy sources with renewables. But any particular energy-generating proposal must be judged on its merits and de-merits.

The point is, is the proposal reasonably likely to satisfy these questions;
does it make economic sense in the foreseeable energy market?
will it place an unreasonable burden on Hackney rate-payers?
what are the impacts on people's use of Hackney Marsh?
will it impact adversely on the “natural” environment in which it will be located?

Nothing is known of the environmental effects of a proposal such as this (a large turbine) on the flora and fauna of a semi-urbanised area rich in wildlife such as the Marsh - there are no precedents that I can find, either in UK nor in the USA. I don't believe sufficient investigation of environmental impacts preceded the emergence of the proposal; these are adequate reasons to oppose this proposal.

If the proposal were confined to the Olympic site, the same points would apply, though arguably we wouldn't be having this discussion. Arguments on this turbine proposal which focus on the land ownership issue divert us from the actual impacts and are beside the point.

One of the many issues not discussed in the Hackney Pravda advert for an Olympics wind turbine on East Marsh is why the turbine is not on the Olympics site. It is an Olympics project, i.e. ODA (Olympics Delivery Authority). The primary reason for building it is to create the illusion that the 2012 games will be Green and to help meet the 25% renewables condition of the IOC (Int. Olym Cmte) award.
Rather than debate whether a turbine on East Marsh is a good or bad idea we should be asking why it is not on the Olympic site. If it is to power the Olympics,the closer the better. Remember Hackney lost 10Ha of open space to the Olympics (Arena Field, White Hart Field and part of the east corner of Main Marsh) and will not receive any exchange land. So the very least that could be done is to put the turbine on what was Hackney land and then pay LBH rent for the site. What we are actually being offered is another land grab for the Olympics with the fig leaf that LBH can charge the private energy provider some ground rent. So no I don't want a wind turbine on East Marsh. Instead lets have 3 on the Olympics site, the one at Eton Manor (in Waltham Forest), the one the ODA are trying to export to East Marsh, and another one for good measure!
Once we have a wind farm legacy on the Olympics site and compensation for the 10Ha of stolen land, then we can discuss the merits or otherwise of further turbines on other sites.