Members of the Ramblers' Association met one summer's Sunday morning last year at Heald Green station to examine obstructions and intimidating signs on a public path. Accompanied by a local councillor and nearby residents, we surveyed the path as it passed through a farm and large private housing estate.
We were constantly assailed by appalling and overwhelming noise levels from low-flying planes, taking off or landing. This affront to the senses formed the intrusive background while we attempted to talk without shouting at each other. There was no escape, short of aborting the investigation and getting the next train home.
I asked how the residents on the huge estate put up with the noise and I was told that they get double glazing and pay a lower council tax "if only to stifle public protest." It was a lovely day and one that might tempt you to sit in the garden. With earplugs, that is, and oblivious to the bird song around you. Yes, they were doing their best to compete, but without success.
From this nerve-wracking experience, it is hard to believe that, according to a government consultative document, The UK is being set on course for the most massive expansion of air travel, the least sustainable and most polluting form of transport.
It is the fast-growing climate change emissions, and as well as causing significant air and noise pollution, it impacts adversely on the built-up and natural environment. It generates more road building and traffic burdens to add to the existing unacceptable levels of asthma. Give them some more of the same seems to be the official line!
These effects extend beyond existing airport boundaries, while access demands divert government funding away from other more environmentally friendly transport projects, such as an integrated public transport system.
Since 1970 the number of air passengers flying out of the UK has grown 500 percent, from 32m to 180m in 2000, and is expected to be double that by 2015. The government forecasts that passenger numbers could double by 2020 and treble by 2030. That is equivalent to a new airport the size of Heathrow every year for the next 30 years!
This nightmare scenario has prompted one of Britain's most authoritative think-tanks, the Institute of Public Policy Research, to accuse the government of being in hock to the airline lobby and is urging the Prime Minister to abandon government proposals to build more airport runways.
It calls for the existing capacity at airports to be utilised more efficiently before expansion is considered. The IPPR is demanding that the full environmental cost, by way of climate change and the horrifying loss of land to an endless desert of concrete and development, must be factors in government thinking.
Airlines pay no tax on fuel or VAT on tickets, and new aircraft carry no government tax. All this helps to create a public demand based on "predict and provide", the worse possible scenario for the health and sanity of those assailed by ever-growing noise and pollution, and environmental degradation.
Gone are the days when those who could afford it fled to greener pastures. With a population density of 1,041 to the square mile in England, there is no way we can escape.
In the conurbations of the north west, the concept of green belts is more than a pious platitude; it is vital for people's mental, physical and spiritual health. A predicted reduction of one percent per annum of aircraft pollution resulting from better technology will be wiped out by the forecast rate of annual growth of between four percent and six percent, and will negate any improvements.
Those visionaries who created the National Trust were mindful that areas such as Tatton Park, Dunham Massey, Quarry Bank, Styal Woods and Lyme Park would be saved in perpetuity for the nation.
Their hope was that these green lungs would provide relaxation. They never dreamt that with the growth of Manchester Airport, and its ever-growing roads, business parks, second and possibly third runways would impinge on their hope for the future.
To walk across Tatton Park is to be assaulted by a cacophony of aircraft noise, diminishing the feeling of "getting away from it all." At Quarry Bank in Styal Woods, earplugs are essential.
The River Bollin is being buried in a concrete coffin to extend runways, while the cement to construct them is being torn from the Peak District National Park. Yet National Parks, in law, are to "enjoy the highest level of environmental protection." Really!
Terry Perkins is a life-long rambler and edits the Ramblers' Association Manchester Area newsletter. This article first appeared in the Manchester Evening News (21/07/03)
