Radio Newsletter

Key words:  Radio Gibraltar     Bayside Environmental Event   GibDock  New Town Act   Idling  DPC   Tuesday Volunteer Day

Momentous year for Radio Gibraltar just celebrated its 60^th year of existence. Where would we be without it indeed! Here’s to the next 60!! The ESG have ourselves somewhat of a historic link now with Radio Gibraltar carrying out our own Environmental Newsletters fortnightly for the best part of 12 years. It is a great help to us to be to share our views, concerns and actions on local and cross border environmental issues in this way where we can reach so many people, if only briefly, and are grateful to have this opportunity. We have published our newsletters on our website since we started and anyone can access these by visiting esg-gib.net under news and archive sections.

This morning, as we heard on our local radio, Bayside School is holding a stalls event for NGOs as part of an Environmental Week being held for the first time. The ESG is supporting this event which it believes is a great idea and hopefully, the first of many! We will be promoting our core values and aims from climate change to renewable energy, waste, cleanliness, pollution, traffic and many others, information on which you can also find by visiting our home page on our website. There will be a focus on traffic issues given many youngsters opt for motorised transport at the earliest possibility to help engage them on the issues and how we need to change the present status quo for healthier forms of transport and calmer roads etc. We would like to wish Bayside School success in its first Environmental Week. Of course Bayside has been a major partner in the Clean up the World Campaign since we first started addressing litter and waste issues on the Rock. New ideas and projects for this years Clean Up will soon be rolled out and we very much look forward to working closely with Bayside School and all our usual partners.

Last week we raised the issue, once again, of the pollution crossing the fence line at GibDock. While issuing public statements we are also meeting and contacting the authorities urging best technologies to be implemented. It was good to see this discussed in the House of parliament and most importantly that the Gibraltar Government has also publicly pledged to see actions taken to reduce the impact from power use, paint overspray and noise pollution produced by this industry. We avidly look forward to concrete steps taken to ensure these results are achieved as soon as possible and that a time frame will be provided to explain when residents can enjoy a reprieve from current impacts.

DPC met this week and another lengthy session ensued once again. There had been talks some time back of having televised DPC sessions. This could be useful as they could be watched later online by anyone interested in establishing the decision making process behind any one application. This would provide the background behind the summarised reports we see in the media – am sure you would agree that 5 hours of discussion can be very challenging to summarise to say the least!

The ESG welcomes the publication of the Green Paper on the New Town Act. The group had submitted its concerns and recommendations during the public consultation rounds and will be checking that these have been addressed.

Finally, on car idling. New cars have built in features to stop this unnecessary use of fuel and pollution to cut out the engine as soon as a car is at standstill. Older cars, however, require human intervention to use common sense and switch off the engine when stopped for more than a few minutes. If more of us do this then we can all open our windows. Imagine! At present, and especially near the border area, idling is a huge problem and has to be better managed. Watch out for a campaign on this soon. It would benefit us all.

Tuesdays is becoming a very busy day for us at our new premises and we shall be inviting groups and members of the public to join us at selected workshops focusing on the practical but always on the environmental!!

Thanks for listening – send us an email at esg@gibtelecom.net Call 200-48996 and visit esg-gib.net for more information.

The ESG notes with interest the statement issued by the Gibraltar Government today clarifying that plans for onshore power supply to vessels are underway.

Government states its aims are to minimise the use of on-shore generators, to see the reduction of paint overspray and emissions and the restriction of noisy operations to daylight hours.

The ESG welcomes the efforts being made to reduce pollution in the area and believes this can be achieved with the application of best available technology and practice.

It therefore hopes to see an onshore power connection and conversion facility installed and up and running as soon as possible with old technologies such as skip mounted generators relegated to the past.

ESG Press Release

 At the end of January the ESG team paid another visit to the New Power Station as the project has significantly evolved in the last few months with the arrival of major equipment components.

The group welcomed the chance to visit all sectors of both the power station and LNG storage facility over a two-hour period accompanied by the GEA and Bouygues top technical team.

For a place like Gibraltar this major project is certainly impressive on a technical level and seen up close the ESG could fully appreciate the scale of the operation and standards being adopted.

The group’s long-term interest and concern with the new power station has always been its environmental impact and safety given its location. It was therefore positive to see the various mitigation measures taking shape and the stack monitors and real-time monitoring equipment in place.

The group welcomes the transparency and time given by all concerned to facilitate these visits, in particular the CEO of the GEA, Michael Caetano and the Minister for the Environment Dr John Cortes. “We look forward to a further visit in the near future when advances regarding monitoring aspects have been completed”, said an ESG spokesperson.

ESG Radio Newsletter 

Key words:  Clean up the World  Presentations    Climate Change and Storms     2nd Power Station visit     Sewage Contract    Idling     DPC

 Clean up the World has now seen 13 years of campaigning for a cleaner, litter free Gibraltar. Engaging the public, on a community wide basis, has been central to its continued success in helping achieve real change on the ground over time. We are still surprised to come across people who have not heard about the campaign so a quick reminder here:

Every year we see several schools, clubs and associations, businesses, agencies and many individuals take part in clearing rubbish from nature hotspots throughout Gibraltar. The widespread effort helps to highlight the issues and impacts of social littering, industrial waste and fly tipping in open spaces in Gibraltar. It brings the issues alive to those who take part and makes a strong case for civic pride and how we are each responsible for looking after our homeland.

This hands-on action has motivated others in the community to launch parallel initiatives, which are gathering pace today. This issue of ever growing waste and litter is a modern world problem, not just ours, but, like many other busy, urbanised communities, we also need to get a grip on our waste issues and improve our record in protecting our natural environment. There are some European countries achieving incredible results on waste management so it clearly can be done.

The date for this years Clean up has not yet been finalised but will take place in September. Final details will be provided soon. As Gibraltar has grown and changed over the years so too are it’s cleaning and maintenance needs and we therefore hope to see the awarding of the new cleaning contract issued as soon as possible.

Our work is not confined to the clean up weekend though with on-going clean ups, certificate ceremonies, talks and presentations going on since the start of the year. Watch out for more details to be released in the media soon.

Moving on to other issues – the recent gale force winds remind us of our place in the world and how very fortunate we are to live in relative safety and comfort for much of the time. Not so for other parts of the world where flooding, severe artic conditions and general mayhem are now generally accepted to be occurring with greater frequency. All points to the need for communities everywhere to address climate change and green up their economies, services and activities and we in Gibraltar, small though we are, are reminded of this responsibility too, especially as we lick our wounds and carry out what are thankfully minor repairs to damages sustained in recent weeks.

The ESG took up the opportunity of visiting the new Power Station and LNG site recently as more of the infrastructure is in place and real-time monitoring equipment beginning to arrive. It was a most interesting 2 hour visit where the group welcomed being able to ask many questions from the project leaders and would like to thank the Minister for the Environment for making this possible. We continue to monitor and closely follow the projects progress and will be releasing a press release on this latest visit this week.

The issuing of the Sewage Contract is welcomed by the group who has campaigned for this for many years. We also welcome posters going up in bus stops reminding drivers not to idle their engines unnecessarily.

The Next DPC session is on Tuesday the 20^th February and you will be able to obtain details for that agenda a week beforehand on the Town Planning website.

Go to: www.esg-gib.net for details on all our newsletters and press releases. Contact us at esg@gibtelecom.net if you want more information. Thanks for listening.

ESG Press Release

Sewage Treatment Plant announcement

Key words: Sewage Treatment Plant   Reference to ESG objectives on this issue

The ESG is obviously delighted to hear today’s announcement regarding the awarding of the contract for our much needed Sewage Treatment Plant.

It has been a core objective of the group and we have lobbied for this for over 15 years following the matter very closely. (see below for link to our list of objectives dated 2017 and Section on Sewage Treatment)

We look forward to discussing this further with the Minister for the Environment and his team and will be interested to learn more details about the project.

http://www.esg-gib.net/dev/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/New_ESG-OBJECTIVES-2017-Complete-Short.pdf