Glastonbury Town Council has written to 300 Town and Parish Councils in 
Somerset, urging them to oppose a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point.

The letter raises concerns over nuclear waste storage, nuclear accidents, and 
the impact of construction traffic on the county. It says that since the 
Council agreed to write to other councils, the record flooding and storm surges 
in West Somerset have only deepened those concerns. And it ends, "We believe 
that statements of concern and opposition by local representative bodies such as yours could play a part in determining Somerset's future for the good". 

A recent meeting with EDF has done nothing to allay the town's fears, according 
to Councillor Jon Cousins (St Edmunds Ward).

"Basically, EDF pulled out of a public meeting and sent David Eccles to our 
Council meeting instead to tell us that Hinkley C would be good for jobs," said 
Mr Cousins. "He could tell us nothing about the nuclear emergency plan for 
Glastonbury - except that we shouldn't eat or drink anything - and assured us 
without a blink that EDF were prepared to store spent fuel at Hinkley Point for 
thousands of years." 

"I was shocked to discover that the spent fuel building will not be as heavily 
protected as the reactor building, making it an obvious target for a malicious 
attack - and it will still be vulnerable to attack or natural disaster long 
after EDF have packed up their profits and gone".

The letter from Glastonbury Town to other councils says that Hinkley C would be "the most expensive nuclear power station on the planet" but that the final 
investment decision has still to be made, as the government's deal with EDF is 
now under review by the EU Competition Commission.

"It's not too late for Somerset people and Councils to raise a voice and stop 
this project before the construction traffic has started rolling," said 
Councillor Denise Michell (St Benedict's Ward). "Glastonbury is a town which is 
ill-prepared for the impact of that traffic, but despite a very reasonable 
appeal from Councillor Ian Tucker, Mr Eccles said that ultimately it would be up 
to contractors which roads they used, and EDF could not be expected to give us 
any assurances."

"It seems that all the big issues with this project are someone else's 
responsibility, and EDF's only responsibility is making the money. With the 
public subsidy agreed by the government, Hinkley C profits are apparently set to 
be well over £50 billion. That puts the so called "benefits to the community" 
into perspective. Somerset could end up shouldering the liabilities of this 
project for generations, and Glastonbury Town Council are not at all happy about that," she said.

ENDS


FULL TEXT OF THE TOWN COUNCIL'S LETTER:

Glastonbury Town Council oppose the proposed Hinkley C development in West 
Somerset for the following reasons:

1. Concerns over the huge impact that the 9 year development might have upon our locality and the county as a whole, particularly construction traffic;
2. The potentially catastrophic impact that a nuclear accident at the facility 
would have on our community and our region;
3. The negligent immorality of leaving highly radioactive waste and spent fuel 
at the site for future generations to deal with - for at least 100 years and 
most probably for many thousands.

The government has announced it's "Strike Price" deal with EDF and 
it has become apparent that the Hinkley C project will be the most expensive 
nuclear power station on the planet, with EDF profits being guaranteed by a 35 
year price-fix for all UK consumers. In recent months there has also been 
mounting pressure to store additional radioactive waste from other UK sites at 
the Hinkley Point complex, raising the prospect of West Somerset becoming a 
"second Sellafield" in the future.

In the light of this Glastonbury Town Council further resolved to contact our 
sister councils in Somerset inviting you to join us in opposing the proposed Hinkley C project.

Since we made that decision, the unprecedented flooding in Somerset, record 
storm surges, and even the recent earth tremor have raised further concerns 
about the viability and long-term safety of Hinkley C. As EDF's "Final 
Investment Decision" is yet to be made, and the financial deal is being 
scrutinised by the EU Competition Commission and Parliament's Public Accounts Committee will investigate it shortly, we believe that statements of concern and opposition by local representative bodies such as yours could play a part in determining Somerset's future for the good.

I came to the conclusion that there is a lot of ill-informed nonsense being said about the Somerset Levels at the moment, so I decided to educate myself. I bought a copy of Michael Williams' 'The Draining of the Somerset Levels,' which is the definitive book on the subject so far as I can tell. It is certainly very interesting.

It tells the story of centuries of relatively ineffective efforts to drain the Levels and to put an end to flooding. The ineffectiveness has been partly due to bureaucracy, partly due to conflicts of interest, and partly due to a belief that draining the Levels by means of gravitational flow is possible - which it isn't - so that the only way to do it is bound to require modern pumping equipment.

The bureaucracy goes back to the medieval 'Court of Sewers,' but the problem essentially is that until the second world war there has never been a central authority able and willing to provide the finance and to make decisions which were not possible for locally-based authorities. In 1939, spurred on by the need to supply the new Ordnance Factory at Puriton with 4.5 million gallons of water a day for the production of high explosives, considerable progress was suddenly made. Since then, the maintenance of the Somerset Levels drainage system has remained the responsibility of central government.

The conflicts of interest have been between the needs of river transport (which requires reasonably deep water) and drainage (which means getting rid of water as efficiently as possible); between the rich (who have wanted to 'improve' the land, which really meant to improve their income from it) and the poor (whose rights of commonage on the moors - summer grazing, peat cutting etc - were gradually eroded by the enclosure and attempted drainage of the levels); between the peat lands (which are only much use for agriculture if drained completely) and the clay lands near the Somerset coast (where there was a need to retain water for irrigation in summer); between different areas of the Levels, which would often drain their land into each others'; between drainage and the construction of fishing weirs, mills and other such installations that would tend to restrict the river's flow and encourage flooding; and more recently between farmers and conservationists. The issue is anything but simple.

And regarding gravity, which is how water normally drains off the land and ultimately into the sea: during times of flood the main river channels through the levels, for reasons that are part-natural and part-man-made, have water levels that are higher than the surrounding land; in  addition to which the coastal belt has a layer of peat that is over-laid with clay (alluvial deposits from ancient sea-flooding), so that the ground level is actually several feet higher than further inland. With the fall from, say, Bruton to Highbridge being only a few inches per mile anyway, 'drainage' per se is not a feasible method of flood prevention. Pumping began with steam power in the nineteenth century, and these days the whole system relies on sophisticated electrically-powered pumping stations which operate more or less the whole time.

After all this Williams, who was writing in 1970, finishes with a warning concerning "the ever-present prospect of the occurrence of a particularly unfavourable combination of high tides, adverse wind and barometric pressure conditions, and heavy and prolonged rainfall. This combination would make short work of man's effort to control the adverse physical environment of the Levels." 

In the winter of 2013/14, this is precisely what has happened.