In a few years from now, a giant four-engined Jumbo-jet will roar up into the Essex sky every minute from runways on the Maplin Sands. Others will be making their approach for the landing from ‘stacking areas’ over Chelmsford and the Isle of Thanet. Many more will be circling round these areas waiting their turn to land. The noise will be heard over half of Essex and Kent.

A six-lane motorway will cross the river Roach from Foulness Island on its way to the capital. A few years later, huge supertankers and container ships will begin to nudge their way through the Barrow Deep into Foulness Docks. Commuters will drive daily across the Crouch, to and from the airport, from housing estates and blocks of flats on Dengie marshes. The first Boeing 747 Jumbo-jet has already flown. The first one to land at Heathrow is expected in February. B.O.A.C. hope to have several in service by next summer. The supersonic Concorde has now reached 960 mph on trial. The pressure is already on.

Early in 1970 the final stage five hearings of the Roskill Commission inquiry into the best site for the third London Airport take place. The decision will not be put off a second time, as it was when Stanstead was first chosen. Essex County Council has already come out in favour of the Foulness scheme. Transfer of the army’s firing range at Shoeburyness to Pembrey in Carmarthen Bay is already under way. So it seems that, short of a miracle, we shall have to face the hard facts.

If the go-ahead is given, work could commence almost immediately. Dutch experts will probably be called in to supervise the construction of the runways of the Maplin Sands. The Dutch have said they could have the equipment on the Foulness site “ready to go” in weeks.

Let us now consider the noise nuisance. Map 1 shows the proposals for the aircraft flight paths (note the ‘stacking areas’ over Chelmsford and Thanet). This shows the fallacy of the assumption that because the airport will be on the coast, there will be little noise over land. As can be seen from the approach paths, more planes will make their run-in over the land than over the sea, and the majority of take-offs (when greatest noise occurs) will be over land as a result of the existing area routes and prevailing south-westerly winds.

Map 2 shows estimated aircraft noise levels indicated by NNI (Noise and Number Index), but, unlike the Roskill Commission, no reduction in aircraft engine noise level in the next ten years is assumed. If the Commission’s assumed reduction in levels of 10 NNI as a result of better engine design does occur, then it will undoubtedly be offset by the larger engines now being fitted to the larger and heavier aircraft. There will also be a considerable risk of a crash due to the number of seabirds that populate the area. According to a leading ornithologist, Dr. William Bourne, the area is populated by between five and ten thousand high-flying Brent Geese between November and March, and by anything between 10,000 and 200,000 gulls (a large bird sucked into a jet intake can cause the engine to cut-out). No other airport in the world has such a high bird population.

If you still think all this is exaggerated, try sailing your boat from Woodbridge down the Deben and round to Aldeburgh when the U.S.A.F is exercising its air power.

In addition, raising the level of the Maplin Sands will inevitably cause tidal changes. There could be serious silting in the Medway. The tidal rate in the Blackwater and Crouch might increase. Thus one of the finest sailing areas in the south, one of the largest areas of safe, sheltered waters on which to learn to sail will be lost forever. This will not worry the majority of people. The hundreds of thousands of visitors who flock to places like Southend and Clacton probably won’t mind a bit more noise. Already our Essex rivers are noisy enough at summer week-ends, what with outboards, water skiers and transistor radios. But if you have grown to appreciate the peace and solitude that can be found in an Essex creek when the crowds have gone home; when the only sounds are the cries of the gull, the oystercatcher, plover, curlew and duck, and in winter the geese; the running of the tide through the saltings; the wind in the rigging… then you will suffer a great loss. The real tragedy of all this is that future generations won’t even have the choice.