St. Katherine’s School in Ham Green has the motto of “Growing together “and the school is definitely growing from strength to strength at present. Planning for a new hospitality and catering facility is currently being finalised. This new facility will provide additional teaching areas, a training kitchen, new production kitchen and a 50-cover restaurant including a bar and delicatessen, which will also be open to the public out of school hours. This new-build will also include a 300-seat canteen facility for the students, as well as increased classrooms and learning space in the English block. It is anticipated that this will be a world class facility, and the best of its kind in the UK when complete.

In December, St. Katherine’s was the first secondary school in the UK to gain the Food for Life Partnership Gold Award and these new developments form a key part of the ongoing strategic plans for the school. As well as new state of the art facilities for the students, two new posts will be created at the school which are currently being advertised. The new role of Facilities and Project Manager will be to oversee the extensive building projects. The second new position is for a Hospitality and Catering Manager who will play a key role in developing the new curriculum relating to the Hospitality Diploma.

The Severn Barrage, Bane or Blessing?

The Severn has the second highest tidal range in the world, and dreams of harnessing the power involved in the vast quantities of water perpetually sloshing up and down some fifty miles of estuary has tempted many down the years. The need for renewable energy is becoming desperate as the alternatives dwindle. World oil production may well have peaked, and its price has increased almost ten fold in a twenty years. North Sea gas has run out, and the cheapest alternative is to put ourselves at the mercy of the Russians. The supply of uranium ore is limited, and the costs of dealing with the decommissioning of nuclear power stations is becoming burdensome. We have got lots of coal still, but the technology of underground gasification and carbon dioxide capture is unproven.

The renewable alternatives are also pretty unsatisfactory. The wind is fickle, the best water power has long since been tapped, and the use of biomass gives a low grade fuel, and to provide for our needs would gobble up most of our agricultural land. Solar energy is least available in mid-winter when it is most needed, doesn’t work at night, and really needs a transformation in battery technology to be effective, though it may well be the best bet long-term. Otherwise freeze or starve are the unhappy choices facing us, and tapping tidal power, which our mediaeval ancestors used very successfully on a small scale, looks very attractive.

It has been calculated that a barrage across the Severn from Brean Down to Cardiff would generate up to five percent of the nation’s electrical demand, and, once built, should provide effectively costless power for at least a century, by which time we might have solved the nuclear fusion problem, or found some other way of living. Five percent is not much, but we could probably save 30% by wasting less, perhaps best achieved by putting the price up year on year, and tidal power would be a part of a complex mix of renewable and fossil power sources that would enable us to get by until the world was transformed in ways as yet unimaginable (as it has been in the past hundred years, after all).

That, in essence, is the argument for the barrage. The technology to build it clearly exists, a tiny prototype in northern France has worked well for forty years, the construction costs are substantial, but less than has been poured into the financial sector in the past year to prop up a kind of cloud-cuckoo-land on which we all appear to depend, and, it could be argued, in a time of high unemployment, investing in vital public works of huge long-term value is just the sort of project we need.

So why am I opposed to it? Fundamentally because electrical power should be generated where it is used, as there are substantial transmission losses, and the money that a barrage would cost could far better be spent on solar panels for all. And, because of the tidal rhythm in the estuary, half the power produced each day would come between 1am and 3am, when it was least needed. Also, because tidal power itself varies by a factor of four over a fortnightly cycle, the barrage would not replace the need for existing conventional power stations, and the total reduction in CO2 output resulting has been estimated as just 0.9% a year.

For such trivial gains we would destroy a unique ecosystem, which has every possible level of legal protection, in almost total ignorance of the long-term consequences, exactly the sort of arrogant approach towards the natural environment that we deplore in, say Brazil and the Amazon rainforest. The barrage might lead to the silting of the enclosed lagoon, and the destruction thus of the ports dependent on deep water channels. The impact on the whole coast both above and below the barrage is entirely unpredictable. Weston could lose its sand. It is quite unclear where the materials to build the barrage would come from; coal-tip waste from S Wales, sand dredged from the estuary itself, stone quarried from the Mendips, or from Scottish islands, have all been suggested, and all involve further massive environmental destruction.

A barrage would change the salinity of the water, and hence all the biodiversity at present in existence. The whole enclosed lake might become a green soup, as the enclosed Cardiff Bay almost did. The wintering birds, for which we have an international responsibility to the lands in which they breed, the entire Arctic Circle, would decrease, just as our summer visitors from Africa are decreasing because of the spread of the Sahara. The barrage would render useless the flood control systems for all the rivers above the barrage that depend on gravity flaps, including the Frome in Bristol, and might lead to the silting up of Bridgewater Bay, or alternately its flooding from an increased tidal range. Should there be sea-level rise in the course of the next century the outcomes are even less certain.

In my judgement the known and unknown environmental consequences outweigh gains that are essentially trivial.

Severn Barrage A Blessing - No Question

In response to Richard Bland’s article, The Severn Barrage, Bane or Blessing? I would like to offer my views.

The Barrage would generate a large output of 17000 GWh./annum amounting to 5% of the U.K. electricity usage, being wholly green energy at a low price of 4p/ KWhr. Water conditions would improve with less mud stirred up, allowing light to penetrate and so enhance conditions for fish and plants. salinity would reduce slightly. The passage of fish through the Turbines and Gates would not be affected because of the very large passages even through the propeller blades of the turbines and the slow speed — only 50 rpm. Under incoming flood tides the turbine blades, gates and sluice gates would all be open allowing free entry of the water which would circulate filling the upper pooi until the sluices close and all the water runs through the turbines generating electricity as the tide falls on the ebb. The generation would last for about 7 hours in a 12 hour tidal cycle with the water level above the barrage held for a much longer time than at present.

Potential flooding from the sea, especially above the dam, would be reduced at high water spring tides by about 0.7m. above the dam and 0.5m. below the dam. At low water when land drainage becomes important sea levels below the dam would be about ¼m. higher than at present, but above the dam in the pool the low water level would be held at ordinance datum level which is about 6m. higher than at present at Avonmouth. Minor works might be necessary to restore land drainage at some points. The raised water level above the dam would certainly improve navigation for small to medium size vessels. For much larger vessels the 0.7 m. less tide at H.W. would not matter in the main channel but there are proposals to build a berth by Avonmouth in the main river and this reduction in level may be of concern. However levels at H.W. would be sustained for a much longer time.

Richard’s main concern is about the loss of feeding areas for birds namely the Welsh Grounds and Middle Grounds which would be covered by the increased level in the pool above the dam. Some compensating ground could be created on the Welsh shore. Below the dam vast areas of mud will still be available in Bridgewater Bay. Reference to books on birds shows that most live and feed all around the British isles.

Privatisation in 1990 ended the central Electricity Generating Board so no one had any responsibility for planning future generating capacity. Private companies sprang up to build new gas fired plant which is efficient and quick to build and took the form of a combination of a gas turbine exhausting into a boiler to provide steam for a steam turbine, known as a Gas CCGT. Gas turbines, of course, burn a C02 producing fuel; it is this C02 that will be reduced when the Barrage is generating and the Gas CCGTs have their output reduced. The reduction amounts to 0.92% of all the U.K. CC2 , not just from electricity production but from transport, heating and industry.

The government and the taxpayer have no part in financing this or any other form of generation and no money is available other than from the normal banks for domestic and small solar installations.

The idea of solar power is attractive to some people and this energy can be sold back to the power companies.

Rock for the dam would certainly not come from the Mendips but by ship from Scotland.

The engineering details for the dam, civil, mechanical and electrical are all well established and no new research is needed.

Ecological issues concerning water quality, silting etc. have been addressed by Professor Roger Falconer F R Eng.-Halcon Professor of Water Management at Cardiff University who fully supports the dam proposal.

The idea today to meet the uncertainties of fuel supplies is to use a wide variety i.e. coal, gas, nuclear, hydro, tidal, wind, biomass. New technologies to capture carbon emissions will give new life for coal which is abundant both in the U.K. and world wide. The Severn Barrage would make a significant contribution equivalent to two or three major power stations.

I would strongly recommend that anyone interested in this important issue obtains a copy of TURNING THE TIDE - Tidal Power in the U.K., available from the Sustainable Development Commission free of charge. Tel. 020 7270 8498 or enquiries@sd-commission.org.uk.