Slimline civil service might be free to ‘think big’ again
MOST islanders will be hoping that Paul Whitfield is successful in his efforts to slim down the civil service and improve the way it works. In Victorian times, a small number of unpaid politicians and a tiny civil service were able to make decisions that resulted in major projects that benefited Guernsey in many different ways. The work they did in and around the harbour at St Peter Port is a classic example. As the administration has expanded, it has been broken up into many different departments, each taking responsibility for one small area of the States work. For many years there has been very little coordination between them, making it almost impossible for grand schemes on the Victorian scale to take place today. The combination of island-wide voting and civil service reorganisation may yet make such projects possible again.
As an example, here is a list of issues currently of concern to various States departments:
n The need to find somewhere to dispose of inert waste.
n The cost of an ever-increasing prison population.
n The increasing risk of devastating flooding due to rising sea levels.
n The need to diversify the island’s economy.
n The need to increase the use of renewable energy.
n The need for more space to provide room for housing and new businesses.
I believe there is a way that an impact can be made on all these problems but only if genuinely coordinated thinking is employed. Starting with the most serious of the issues above, all islands with low-lying areas are at risk from rising sea levels. Some in the Pacific have already had to be abandoned because of it. In Guernsey it is the east coast that is particularly vulnerable. Not only does the sea already come over the sea wall fairly regularly at spring high tides but there is a very high concentration of homes and businesses within the area at risk.
There will come a day when a perfect combination of spring tides, a north-easterly storm and the storm surge it generates will bring the sea crashing over the main road between St Peter Port and St. Sampson’s. It may not be this year, or within the next 10 years but it will happen one day and when it does, the death and devastation it brings could be catastrophic. ‘Desirable properties with island views’ could overnight become desirable only to pollock and bass as they disappear under the sea when it takes back the areas that were stolen from it in Victorian times. The ability of the island to deal with such a disaster would be hampered by the loss of many business properties in the area.
The obvious solution to this problem would be to increase the height of the sea wall, but this could only be done if the base of the wall were wider and stronger. This would be impracticable on the seaward side of the wall, so it would mean digging up the main road and quite possibly putting the road on the top of the new, much higher, sea wall. One can barely imagine the disruption to traffic and the disturbance to nearby residents of such a project.
The only alternative to raising the height of the current sea wall would be to build a completely new sea wall further out. If this were done, the new wall could also take a new road on top of it and that would much reduce journey times between St Peter Port and St. Sampson’s and would drastically reduce traffic on the existing main road.
A new sea wall built across Belle Greve Bay would create a sizeable lagoon. If this were allowed to be semi-tidal, the environmental impact would be minimal and the movement of water in and out of the lagoon could be used to generate electricity, as many of us have seen done for many years at the Rance Barrier in Brittany.
As has been suggested on a number of previous occasions, the lagoon could also provide an opportunity to build artificial islands, piers etc. on which new houses and businesses could be placed. Designed imaginatively, this could create a Venice-like environment that would be attractive both to residents and tourists. It might even be possible to extend some of the waterways inland.
Much of the massive quantity of building materials needed for such a project could be provided by recycling inert waste and I would suggest that this could be done at the prison, which has an increasing number of people who are being accommodated, fed and cared for in some comfort at the expense of taxpayers – all they have had to do in return is to commit a serious crime. It cannot be unreasonable, even in the eyes of the European Court of Human Rights to require prisoners to pay for their accommodation, food etc. from the earnings of their honest labour.
The prison could and should be run as a profit-making organisation. This could be achieved by building an inert waste recycling facility within its boundary. Wood and plastic taken from waste could be converted into a durable, strong composite* and stone, brick, glass etc. turned into aggregate that could then be used to make building blocks. The output of such a facility would be needed for some years to provide material for the Belle Greve project. When that was eventually finished, the products could be sold locally or exported.
Condor enjoys an extremely advantageous arrangement with the Channel Islands and must wish to retain its current position. I am confident that Condor would therefore offer the island greatly discounted freight rates for the carriage of these products to the UK on vessels that mostly carry freight in the opposite direction. I seem to have come up with a scheme that would help solve all the issues listed above but could only be implemented if there were genuine coordination between the work of different States departments.
BARRIE PAIGE
GY6 8BP.
*PS. I have spoken to someone working in a commercial version of this sort of facility and he assures me that building one on a scale to suit the volume of waste and the available space would not be impractical.