Please act now and support our legal fight to save Minster Marshes and Pegwell Bay from National Grid’s plans to build environmentally damaging infrastructure. The iconic Pegwell Bay is part of the North East Kent Marine Protected Area and has multiple designations that should protect it from development – more than any other bay on the whole UK coastline. Just inland and functionally linked to Pegwell Bay, and with its own Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) designation, Minster Marshes form an internationally important wetland.

Destruction of rare habitat forever

Despite these multiple protections, National Grid (NG) (a privately-owned company whose remit is to maximise shareholders’ profit) wants to build a gigantic 28-metre/100-feet-high electricity converter station covering an area of 90,000 square metres (nine hectares or 22 football pitches) on Minster Marshes right next to the SSSI. If built, it will be the largest converter station in Europe.

Because the building will be on marshland, it will be erected on a two-metre-high concrete platform covering an area of one square kilometre, causing further damage to the marsh and substantially increasing flood risk.

Landfall will be straight through Pegwell Bay National Nature Reserve. NG says it will drill under the nature reserve and leave limited impact. However, it caused permanent damage to the saltmarsh and the nature reserve when it drove its Nemo cable through in 2019, so we know it doesn’t keep its promises.

NG’s Sea Link plans have now gone before the Planning Inspectorate under the Development Consent Order (DCO) process. We desperately need to raise funds to mount a legal challenge to protect this special place for wildlife and for generations to come.

Working closely with the Environmental Law Foundation, initial funding will pay for expert witnesses and a barrister to speak on our behalf during the examination process for the DCO. If we successfully challenge the project at this stage, there will be no further legal fees. Any unused funds will be donated to CPRE Kent, who have provided us with extensive pro bono advice.

Minster Marshes comprise a unique habitat, functionally linked to the coast at Pegwell Bay, for wading and migratory birds, including more than 30 Red-listed species. The marshes are also home to many other protected species, including the endangered European eel, that depend on the increasingly scarce habitat they provide.

Thanet’s wildlife cannot afford to lose this valuable protected resource and sanctuary for the migratory birds that depend so heavily on it. In addition to the loss of habitat, National Grid’s plans put birdlife at unnecessary and avoidable risk from pylon collision. The planned pylons will take the number of power lines crossing a two-kilometre stretch of the River Stour from 56 to 82 – a 46% increase.

Impact on local people and tourism

Thanet is the most densely populated district in Kent and NG’s plans will not only mean the destruction of much of our last remaining green and wild spaces but also have a severely damaging impact on the lives of local people over a four-year construction period. NG wants to have the right to build seven days a week, 7am to 7pm, over those four years, with some 38,000 lorry movements and multiple road and footpath closures.

This is the wrong project in the wrong place

Yes, we want green energy, but this proposal is not green. The carbon footprint of the project is immense and there are better and far less damaging locations available for this kind of infrastructure. Trashing an internationally important area for wildlife in the name of green energy is not green, not sustainable and not in the best interests of our planet or its people.

This huge infrastructure project will destroy this tranquil space forever and rob wildlife of yet more habitat – and all during the worst biodiversity crisis in history.

Please see our website:

www.minstermarshes.com

for more information and join us on Facebook at #SaveMinsterMarshes.

Every donation will help. Thank you in advance for your support.