<font color="#FF0000">BARRAGE</font>

It is going to cost shed loads of money - maybe £40 Billions.

The Government has now earmarked five different schemes for serious consideration.

I say let's get on with it. The barrage makes sense - and they could stick a host of windmills on top

The magnificent Severn

I said so in Parliament (February 2009):

And I wrote all about in the Western Daily Press on November 19th:

"I have just attended the annual meeting of the Exmoor Society – I went because I am a vice-president – where we were given a presentation on the official line opposing the construction of two wind farms in North Devon.

Not actually inside the Exmoor National Park boundary, but at locations which can clearly be seen from the southern reaches of the park.

Now, we have to be careful when making objections of this kind: from the summit of Dunkery Beacon, the highest point on the moor, there is a view stretching for 100 miles on a clear day. So exactly how far away does an unsightly development have to be before it can be said not to impinge on people’s enjoyment of the park? Should the Exmoor Society, for instance, be campaigning against any more large industrial development in South Wales – which, after all, is only 12 miles away across the Bristol Channel and is clearly visible from Exmoor?

On the other hand few people are going to defend wind farms as making a positive contribution to the landscape. There are many who don’t mind them, and would be prepared to put up with their appearance in the knowledge that they were making some contribution to meeting our energy needs.

But the fact remains that those areas best suited, because of their exposed position, to wind farms are generally to be found in national parks and other areas of high landscape value. Hence the inevitable outcry and the tedious trudge through all the time-consuming procedures of the planning system before a decision is reached. And whichever way that decision goes the only winners are the planning lawyers who grow fat on the daily fees representing either proposers, objectors or local authorities.

At this rate we are never going to achieve anything like our targets for alternative energy generation by the time the crunch arrives – and make no mistake about it, the clock is already running down. At some point in the not too distant future we shall have to decommission all our old nuclear power stations, the well of North Sea oil will have run all but dry and we shall find ourselves in an energy crisis, dependant for the bulk of our needs on the gas which other countries choose to send us.

Quite probably the nimbyists who pledge to oppose each and every proposal for a wind turbine have not thought this through. Perhaps they have, but do not find the scenario as frightening as I do. But when that energy gap suddenly appears and the lights start to go out they are going to find themselves in the same place as the rest of us – in the dark. And I, for one, don’t relish the prospect.

Earlier I mentioned the Bristol Channel, the proposed home of the Severn Barrage. And this, I firmly believe, is a scheme which really does offer us the prospect of secure, long-term energy supplies. Depending on how and where it was built it could provide a base-load figure of 10 or even 12 per cent of our energy needs.

A barrage scheme of some kind has been mooted for years to harness the second highest tidal range in the world – a unique potential asset which nature has given us. At various points over the last three decades it has bubbled to the surface in a welter of reports, studies and predictions, only to sink again, because the case against building it has always appeared stronger than that in favour.

But now, I would suggest, there is an overwhelming necessity for that barrage to be constructed. It will be expensive. But it will generate cheap power for generations to come. It will contribute greatly to our renewable energy programme – and be far less intrusive than the 5,000 wind turbines we apparently will need to erect in the countryside by 2020.

This government, notorious for its dithering and indecision, has at last announced it is fast-tracking the next phase of our nuclear programme – and I am one of the first to applaud that.

But the re-emergence of the barrage scheme as a likely contender in the race to secure future energy supplies has been met by another barrage - of whines and whinges, the loudest (predictably) coming from two government agencies: the Environment Agency and Natural England, or Unnatural England as I prefer to call it. Evidently the senior staff at both envisage the remaining years to their retirement being filled preparing for and appearing at immensely drawn-out planning inquiries which will devote inordinate amounts of time to deciding what effect the barrage will have on the life cycle of the Bristol Channel shrimp.

Let me say it again: we don’t have time for this. The barrage scheme must also be fast-tracked as a matter of national importance. Best efforts must be made to mitigate any impact on wildlife, but built it must be unless all of us – career conservationists, professional objectors and the general public alike – are not to be left shivering in our homes in a few years’ time."

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