THE RSPB OFFICIAL OBJECTION TO THE A5WTC

A briefing from RSPB Northern Ireland
Briefing on the A5 dualling proposal
February 2011
Background
Roads Service proposed to dual the A5 between New Buildings and Aughnacloy, to improve the western transport corridor between Dublin and Derry. This was a route identified in the Regional Transportation Strategy. The RSPB has advised Road Service and their consultants on environmental surveys since 2008. The concerns we raised at an early stage led to the choice of a route less likely to impact whooper swans, a species protected under Annex 1 of the European Birds Directive. Nevertheless the route will impact areas of habitat and the wildlife they support along its length.
The RSPB position
The RSPB is aware that the importance of the A5 as a key transport corridor is already established in the Regional Transportation Strategy. However, Roads Service, as all Government, has committed to sustainable development. Roads Service has a responsibility to reduce car usage and increase bus and train use, cycling and walking.
The current proposed budget for DRD including Roads Service proposes cuts to local and community transport, as well as projects promoting more sustainable transport with lower carbon emissions (rail, cycling, walking). These cuts are significant for those programmes, although minor compared to the cost of the A5. This is contradictory to DRD's own sustainable development goals.
In addition, the completion of the A5 relies on co-funding from the Irish Government, by no means secure given the forthcoming election in Ireland. A substantial amount has already been spent on projects that Roads Service proposes to suspend, such as the A6 and the A2. We ask whether this investment will have been wasted, or whether the delays mean additional money will have to be spent to resurrect those projects in a few years time.
Therefore, although we do not object to the proposal based on the accompanying Environmental Statement (ES) and Habitats Regulation Assessments (HRA), we have objected to the budget proposal to progress this scheme at this time.
The RSPB supports the development of an integrated transport system to reduce dependence on non-renewable fossil fuels, and seeks investment to reduce our reliance on car transport. This is an important part of mitigating climate change.
Our comments on the ES and HRA follow.

International obligations - whooper swans, kingfishers and designated sites
The route now avoids fields used by wintering whooper swans. We have advised some further measures to ensure that the birds will not be disturbed during construction or operation of the road.
Kingfishers are also listed on Annex 1 of the Birds Directive, requiring special conservation measures to ensure their survival and reproduction. We have recommended additional surveys to ensure that kingfisher nests are not disturbed or destroyed during use, and to require replacement nest holes/banks where damage outside the breeding season is unavoidable.
The route crosses several watercourses designated as Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) under the European Habitats Directive, but we believe appropriate mitigation and restoration has been suggested. It will be essential that this is included in contract documentation and enforced.
National and local biodiversity
The surveys along the route have been well undertaken and reported. Survey results informed routes changes to avoid nationally designated sites, such as McKeans Moss.
However, loss of local biodiversity is unavoidable along a development of this length. The RSPB advocates no net loss of biodiversity, in keeping with sustainable development and the forthcoming biodiversity duty contained in the Wildlife and Natural Environment Bill.
We have therefore recommended that Roads Service or the consultants create a register of all proposed habitat losses, and identify how and where replacement habitat will be provided. Ensuring no net loss of biodiversity often requires the replacement of more habitat than is lost. For example, it is necessary to replace a greater length of hedgerow than that removed, because new habitats often do not support the quantity or diversity of species found in established habitats. We have asked for more detail on how this will be done.
We recommend a number of other mitigation measures that we wish to see included in contract documentation should the project proceed, and seek a commitment from Roads Service to produce an end of contract report on the effectiveness of habitat protection, mitigation and management, based on appropriate monitoring.
Contact: Claire Ferry, Senior Conservation Officer, RSPB Northern Ireland, Belvoir Park Forest, Belfast BT8 7QT, email: claire.ferry@rspb.org.uk, tel: 028 9049 1547

Car pollution must be cut by half in 15 years: report

Wednesday, 6 January 2010 - Belfast Telegraph.

The volume of emissions from road traffic must be halved by 2025 if Northern Ireland is to meet its climate change targets, official predictions have revealed.

Further increases will significantly undermine the Executive's ability to meet its overall aims, a report from the Department for Regional Development (DRD) warned.

Pollutants from transport increased significantly since 1990, affecting progress in other areas, the paper added. There has been a notable increase in rural driving and transport for construction materials.

The DRD review said: “While it may be possible to pursue more ambitious reductions in other sectors to address potential shortfalls in transport, the fact remains that further increases in road transport emissions will significantly undermine the potential to successfully realise the Executive's targets and commitments in this area.

“Transport must therefore play its part. Indeed the outworking of the Climate Change Act, the Renewable Energy Directive and related legislation are likely to require action to reduce emissions from road transport.”

A rapidly growing population and economic growth following the end of the conflict contributed to past increases in demand for transport, the dossier added. Within freight transport there has been a particular rise in light goods vehicle traffic. Total greenhouse gas emissions from road transport increased by 53% between 1990 and 2006.

The paper, Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Road Transport, added: “The scale of the challenge is considerable, but it is unlikely to decrease in magnitude in the absence of a concerted policy response.

“Moreover, it will require a focus on all areas of transport including freight.”

It said traffic speeds decreased by 12% from 2001 to 2007.

“Increased journey times have a significant economic and environmental impact, reducing productivity as workers and goods spend more time travelling, and increasing the costs and environmental impacts of travel as more fuel is consumed.

“There is also clear evidence that the provision of extra road capacity in conditions of actual or expected congestion has consistently lead to greater volumes of traffic and cannot be provided in line with rates of traffic growth.”

The DRD committee at Stormont takes evidence from officials about the report today.

DRIVING HOME AN IMPORTANT LESSON THAT'S NOT YET LEARNED - IRISH NEWS FEBRUARY 2ND 2010

How the Minister is making a rail mess of the west's transport system

By Eamonn McCann
Thursday, 11 February 2010

If all the arguments against spending up to a billion pounds on a dual carriageway from Derry to Aughnacloy were laid out end to end, the Department of Regional Development would drive a bulldozer over them.

At the same time, the department seems determined to derail all imaginative proposals for upgrading our rail network.

There are big-money interests backing roads; only plain people and commonsense campaigning for rail.

Contractors have been appointed for the 86km A5 project, even though the statutory consultation exercise has yet to take place.

Meanwhile, serious doubt arises about the delivery of Minister Conor Murphy's repeated pledge to re-lay the Derry-Coleraine rail line. And the lobby for the restoration of the old GNR line from Derry through Strabane and Omagh is being treated with disdain.

The bias against rail and in favour of roads contradicts the Executive's own undertakings to combat pollution.

A DRD report published last month declared: 'Further increases in road transport emissions will significantly undermine the potential to successfully realise the Executive's targets and commitments in this area . . . The outworking of the Climate Change Act, the Renewable Energy Directive and related legislation are likely to require action to reduce emissions from road transport.'

The report adds that 'the provision of extra road capacity . . . has consistently led to greater volumes of traffic'.

If this means anything it's that the A5 project should urgently be reconsidered. But the chances of this happening are slim.

On safety grounds alone, the A5, particularly between Newbuildings and Strabane, needs upgrading. But 86km of dual carriageway is a different proposition.

Along some sections, the road will have to be gouged into the countryside, while, for the 8km flood plain between Bready and Strabane, an embankment between seven and 13 metres high will have to be built. The impact on the landscape will be huge.

Before the route was chosen, a 'visual impact assessment' was carried out. From a helicopter.

It might have been hard to see from a helicopter that the new road would obliterate Tully Bog near Beltany Road, intrude on Mulvin Park with its ancient stone circle atop a mound, run within 50 metres of Harry Avery's Castle at Newtownstewart, a Gaelic stone structure with two stern and imposing D-shaped towers, a sight of aching beauty when silhouetted against a sunset, probably built by Aonrai Aimhbreidh O'Neill (died 1392). This won't have rated a glance from the planners as they plotted the concreting of the terrain.

The A5 could be made as safe as a road can be and the GNR rail line restored for less than the price of the proposed dual carriageway.

The track-bed for the line is still there. It could link at Portadown with Belfast-Dublin. There is no reason Derry-to-Dublin couldn't be done along this route in comfort in two-and-a-half hours. Who would want to travel any other way?

Last November, Mr Murphy told Ulster Unionist Tom Elliot that the proposed rail link had been shown to be "unfeasible". He referred the Fermanagh man to "the investment delivery plan which is published on the Strategic Investment Board's website" and to "the business case, completed in August 2007 . . . for the New Trains Two programme".

But I can find nothing on the SIB website of any assessment, or analysis, or any exercise of any kind to establish the feasibility or otherwise of a Derry-Portadown line. Nor in the August 2007 Trains Two business case.

The idea that rail is "unfeasible" is not an established fact, but an assumption.

Similarly with the relay of Derry-Coleraine. The Into The West lobby group, the rail unions and a number of MLAs - most vociferously John Dallat - campaigned to have the Coleraine-Derry relay carried out at the same time as the upgrade of Ballymena-Coleraine, completed in 2008.

But the DRD pushed the project into the next spending round, with loud assurances that it would certainly go ahead. Now it seems set to fall under the axe of budget cutbacks.

A clue to the factors behind this thinking might be discerned in the identity of the construction companies selected in advance for the A5 mega-contracts: Newbuildings to Sion Mills, Balfour Beatty/BAM/FP McCann Joint Venture; Sion Mills to Omagh, Roadbridge/Sisk/PT McWilliam Joint Venture; Omagh to Aughnacloy, Graham/Farrans Joint Venture.

Big hitters one and all. And we mustn't forget our constant friends, the consultants.

In the Assembly on December 19, Allan Bresland (DUP, Mid-Tyrone) asked the minister "how much his Department has paid, to date, to Mouchel consultants in relation to their work on the proposed A5 . . . and what is the anticipated total payment?"

Here's the answer: "Roads Service has to date paid Mouchel £15,583,276, in relation to development work completed to date, on the A5 western transport corridor project. It is anticipated that they will be paid around £32m under their current commission, which extends to the end of the public inquiry phase.

"If [!] a successful outcome is obtained at public inquiry, it is anticipated that further costs to completion of the project would be in the order of £15-£20m."

Around £50m then. To an outside operator for advice on how to implement a proposal which we will look back on in time and choke as we wonder what we must have been thinking to let them away with it.

ARE ELECTRIC CARS THE ANSWER TO THE FUEL CRISIS?

Frank McDonald, Irish Times writes:

But has anyone apart from James Nix, transport policy co-ordinator for the Irish Environmental Network, asked where all the lithium needed for electric car batteries is going to come from? As he wrote recently in Village magazine, there is only enough lithium available to make five million of the 50 million cars produced worldwide each year.

“Although this shortage of lithium was denied at first, now even car manufacturers accept the problem, and Mitsubishi admits that lithium supplies are so tight that by 2015 electric cars may be uncompetitive to build,” Nix said. Already, a lithium battery pack – 100 times larger than what’s in a laptop – accounts for €7,000 of the cost of an electric car.

“Mining lithium is a dirty process. Vast amounts of chlorine are used . . . and [this] destroys the local water table. Industrial lithium production has already laid waste thousands of square kilometres, leaving water supplies too polluted even for agriculture, and ending farming in parts of Chile and Argentina. It threatens to do the same in Bolivia.”

Another reader adds:

The question for Eamonn Ryan is: How do you square the circle regarding electric cars and the scarcity of lithium? And how...as a "Green" does he stand over the destruction which the mining of lithium causes? Is the damage ok because the mines are not in Ireland?

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/0422/1224268870012.html

MAJOR ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER FOR TYRONE RIVERS

ONE CONCERNED MLA REPORTS, REGARDING THE ROAD WORKS ALONG THE A4:

"It would appear that the major road works from Dungannon to Ballygawley have created problems to the fish stock and wild life environment on this stretch of road which will take many years to restore and action must be taken by Department of Regional Development, NIEA and DCAL to immediately take steps to protect fish stocks and wild life. A more joined up approach is required by government departments.

"These rivers have been inspected by NIEA and their findings may confirm that the Ballygawley River has been completely destroyed by pollution (siltation from road works). This is despite the fact that DRD were supposed to ensure that this did not occur.

MOUCHEL, THE ENGINEERS WHO WERE ALSO RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ENVIRONMENTAL STATEMENT FOR THE A4/A5 WORKS, STATED IN NOVEMBER 2005:

The design construction and maintenance of the road drainage systems will follow the best
practice guidelines described in SEPA (Scottish Environmental Protection Agency) Pollution
Prevention Guidelines.  The mitigation measures and the management of the site in
accordance with the requirements of the relevant authorities will ensure that there are no
significant impacts on surface waters in the vicinity of the proposed A4 Dualling.

http://www.eib.org/attachments/pipeline/20060078_nts_dungannon_ballygawley.pdf

MOUCHEL ARE NOW BEING PAID HANDSOMELY TO OVERSEE THE A5WTC PROJECT IN THE FOYLE VALLEY.

NOTE THIS COMMENT FROM A LOCAL ENVIRONMENTALIST COMPARING THE POTENTIAL DAMAGE WITH WHAT HAS OCCURRED ALONG THE A4:

The impact on the Foyle catchment from any A5 development would potentially be even more significant. The entire Foyle catchment is designated an SAC for its internationally important salmonid populations; siltation from runoff could be hugely devastating. Salmon and wild trout in the Foyle catchment face enough problems already such as afforestation, acidification, netting, salmon farming units on the headwaters and introduction of non indigendous fish species.