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 60th 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.
