Toward a green manifesto for Stoke-on-Trent

What would a genuinely green election manifesto for Stoke-on-Trent looks like? I don't mean the half-baked ideological mish-mash of the economically illiterate Green Party. I mean proper old-school green measures, to do with wildlife, strengthening ecosystems and cleaning up local environments. Here are my suggestions:

* Litter and dumping:

A constant multi-year rolling programme of 'showcase' prosecutions of fly-tippers and dumpers, modeled after the successful and unrelenting anti-drugs Operation Nemesis. Use 'smart water' sprays, roadside stops, license enforcement, sting operations, cameras and audio surveillance, license plate ID, and all the other tools available.

Local councillors should be asked by voters to commit at least 10% of their Ward budget to community litter picks. And in the worst areas, so as not to replicate existing Council provision.

Free litter pick-up tools / bags / gloves, offered to those committing to organise regular litter picks.

A public campaign to target the idiots who feel compelled to hang sickening little plastic bags of dog poo on trees, bushes and fences.

Double the litter picking budget for the city, with new part-time 15-20 hour a week posts to make it attractive for older people.

* Vehicle pollution:

Stoke-on-Trent is one of the worst in the country for potentially deadly air pollution along roads. We need a formal scientific investigation into the reasons for this, which also lays out the practical measures we can take to reduce it. Possibly it has to do with our clogged roads, which causes so many vehicles to stop/start in heavy traffic.

Force another few thousand "old clunker" cars off the roads of the city.

Mandatory monthly spot 'health checks' on all buses entering Hanley bus station, in terms of how heavily the 'heavy black' type of diesel fumes roll out of their exhaust pipe as they climb the short hill up to the bus station.

Search for a suitable space in the city to which we could move all the city's car scrap yards / 'orrible car repair yards / old car tyre sellers.

* Environment restoration:

Restore and 'daylight' a highly polluted tributary of the Trent, the Fowlea Brook.

Officially decide which of the "fence and forget" brownfield wasteland in Stoke is never going to find a use, and properly restore them with basic tree planting, simple pond-making and by breaking up concrete surfaces so that nature can take over.

Consider a joint Stoke-on-Trent/Newcastle-under-Lyme project to expand Bradwell Wood beyond its current margins, by using field margins and nearby disused brownfield sites.

Link environment restoration to local schools in an ongoing way, via a small cross-schools cadre of 'young citizen scientists', doing real science.

* Wildlife:

We need a proper timetabled 'wildlife and green places strategy' such as the one Newcastle-under-Lyme has been enacting for the last decade. Something better than Stoke's vague and too-late 2014 'green space strategy'. In terms of wildlife this just has a paragraph of hot air in a larger report, without any deliverables or timetable.

A major urban wildlife survey, to find out what is in the city, where it is and what new 'corridors' might better connect it together.

An expansion of the successful programme to allow grass to grow tall on parts of playing fields, grass verges etc, which doesn't appear to have caused any added grass fire hazard.

Commit to a 20% increase in 20 key species in the city by 2020 — frog and newt friendly ponds, hedgehog protection, hawks, owls, bees, rare plants, etc. Consider crowd-funding or bringing in business sponsors on this on a per-species basis, to cover the cost of the project.

* Light pollution:

A survey of practical measures to further reduce light pollution in the city. It's probably better than it was (it's been reduced by 25% in the West Midlands since the early 1990s), but the night sky above Stoke is still a-glow on a Friday and Saturday night, just as if the old blast furnaces at Shelton Bar were still going.

* Noise pollution:

This seems to be ever-increasing. Explore measures for reducing it. For instance, require council tenants in flats to use wireless headphones to listen to music and TV, rather than big amplified sound systems.

* Allotments:

A commitment not to sell allotments or build on them for the next 20 years.

* Public footpaths:

A commitment not to permanently close off-road footpaths in the city, and to maintain the off road cycle-path network.

Hotspot or notspot?

Re: the geothermal power proposal for Stoke-on-Trent, for which funding has reportedly now been secured.

Deep Geothermal Review Study: Final Report, UK Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC), October 2013.

The report's mentions of Staffordshire: zero.

The report's mentions of Stoke-on-Trent: zero.

Map showing a "volcano" or heat "bubble" hotspot under Stoke: mysteriously missing...

Indeed, according to the map we are remarkably chilly (blue is cooler, red is hotter), compared to other parts of the UK. So far as I can see the hope of 'hot rocks' rests on a set of linked assumptions, assumptions that the government report above doesn't seem to place much faith in. Certainly not enough to put Stoke on the map.

The story behind these assumptions starts back in 1920. In 1920–21 the Apedale No.2 Borehole was sunk to 1294m (0.8 miles) under the influence of Sir John Cadman, near Stage 8 at Apedale colliery, three miles west of Stoke-on-Trent. The site owner was apparently seeking oil. Instead he was disappointed, finding under the coal only an "at least 840m thick" layer of useless volcanic rock (called 'tuff' by geologists)...

"Apedale No.2 Borehole, drilled almost on the peak of the Apedale anomaly, proved over 840m of volcanic rocks buried by less than 450m of sedimentary rocks." — Geology of the country around Stoke-on-Trent (1998).

The Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London stated of the Apedale borehole that it...

"encountered an exceptional thickness of igneous rock, indicating either that it had entered a volcanic neck or that it had crossed the axial plane and was in steep-dipping lavas or ash beds"

So a possible volcanic cone neck. But no certainty.

It was later "postulated" by a geology paper for the local geological society that Apedale was thus the cone of the ancient volcano that had produced the "tuff", and that its volcanic rocks might extend out to the east under Stoke-on-Trent...

So far as I can find no-one has ever followed up this "postulation" (a guess, in plain English) with actual test boreholes in Stoke. Even the deepest coal mines seem never to have discovered what lay below the lowest coal line in Stoke. But the age of these volcanic "Apedale tuffs" rocks is congruent with what's been mooted in the press about the current geothermal project, with talk about a "350 million year old" volcano under Stoke. Actually the cone may have been three miles west of Stoke, rather than under the city — but that's beside the point.

The proposers of the current plan then appear to assume that these volcanic rocks might, perhaps, still be more than naturally radioactive in some way. Unnamed "unstable isotopes" have been vaguely mentioned in the press by Prof Peter Styles, a geophysicist at Keele University. It's then suggested that this radioactivity might be what causes the flooded mines in Stoke to be hot. There is said to be "hot water at 800-1000m in centre of city" in flooded mines (Stoke-on-Trent PLEEC Energy Efficiency Strategy - Stakeholder Workshop 1 document).

How hot, exactly? The council document City Systems Integration: A Feasibility Study for the Technology Strategy Board mentioned the "40° C water of the flooded mines at depths of 600m beneath the city". The BBC reported in June 2012 that Prof Peter Styles — who it said was the one "who suggested the [whole] idea to the council" — claimed that the water temperatures could get up to "43°C in some places" in the North Staffordshire coal field. That does seem to be hotter than normal (mines are always warm, and get warmer as you go deeper). Though I haven't been able to find out for certain exactly how or when or where this mine water temperature was measured. Given the depths mentioned, the measurements could have been from the Hanley Deep mine (now Central Forest Park), whose deepest shafts went to 880 yards (800m) and were dug and in use circa 1901-1970s.

But the matter is complicated because the Hanley Deep, along with the nearby Sneyd Colliery was later "connected underground to the refurbished Wolstanton Colliery in 1962" and was pumped from there. The idea was to run all three mines through one pithead at Wolstanton, to save money. This plan was accompanied by a huge underground reconstruction under Stoke-on-Trent that spanned the years 1951 to 1975. The deepest the combined and expanded Wolstanton ever achieved appears to have been 3750ft (1140m or 1.14km), and presumably the Coal Board took readings of the water temperatures at the time. All of the shafts in this mega-pit flooded in 1986 after the pumps were turned off. Given the depth at which Wolstanton was still finding coal, one wonders where the volcanic tuffs were? Presumably further down, perhaps dipping down and away from the high volcano cone at Apedale and thus buried somewhere toward the 2km level — if there was a volvano at Apedale and if its lava flow ever reached Stoke, and then escaped being washed away by some sea in the intervening 350 million years.

But the site of the proposed geothermal power plant suggests a backstop option, one nearer the surface. According to the planning maps the power plant will be on the far Etruria side of Festival Park. Right next to the planned Wolstanton road bridge over the A500, just north of the point at which the new road is to touchdown on Festival Park. So presumably that means the geothermal pipe could go down from there into the old Grange coal mine area. The Grange was used as a dump for "pumping water" from 1917 to 1937, after the Grange mine itself was abandoned to total flooding in 1917. Specifically, after 1917 it was remembered as having been "used as a pumping pit" to take the water out of the 470ft (173m) deep "Racecourse Pits at Etruria" (Mr. W. Jack, Norton-in-the-Moors, who gave information in 1959 for the A History of the County of Stafford, 1963). If going for such an easier mine water option, what if the heat in the depths of the Hanley Deep simply isn't present in the presumably shallower Grange mine? Or is there a fallback intention to put a pipe into some long-forgotten deep hot shaft of the Hanley Deep, which might strike out from Forest Park and run directly under that particular spot at Festival Park? In the absence of a map of the final 1970s layout of the Wolstanton / Hanley Deep shafts and tunnels it's difficult to tell.

But I imagine that the greener option for Stoke's geothermal — compared to pumping up highly polluted mine water and hoping it doesn't ever leak into the city — will be to try to tap the deeper "tuff" hot rocks that may exist far under the old mines. Certainly the hazy press reports make it seem that way, now that methane extraction from the mines has been ruled out on cost grounds. Perhaps all the options will be tried, since I guess it's as cheap to drill a three step borehole (Grange mines to 300m? / Hanley Deep mines to 800m? / "hot rocks" to 1.5-2km?) and see what comes up from the probes and cameras at each step, once you have the drilling rigs up and the engineers on site. Rather than go hell-for-leather for the 2km level. The borehole itself is presumably a fairly low cost and low-risk endeavor, with the bulk of the £50m only being committed later to the district heat network of pipes, if the borehole discoveries justify the investment. On that basis the government's backing is presumably not: "You're definitely on top of a volcano, so we're backing you" but rather "Well... if you can prove it's down there, then you're guaranteed the core funding".

So if the new Council offices in Hanley are "build it and they will come" then the proposed geothermal borehole seems to be "drill it, and see". That seems to be true of the hope for hot rocks and for hot deep mine water. Nice if it all happens, and if it does then I'll celebrate along with everyone else. But it looks to me like we won't actually know if the volcano theory is correct until the borehole drill-bit cuts through the millstone grit and drops into whatever is down there under Stoke's coal. Hopefully it won't be a live volcano.

Tony Chilton, gent's barber of Stoke

Sad to hear that Tony Chilton, a traditional gent’s barber of Stoke-on-Trent, has passed away. He was my barber for about seven years, at Tony’s Barber Shop, 121 College Road by the University. A real character and a nice bloke, he's very much missed.

Beehive under threat

Sad to hear that The Beehive pub, on the Honeywall near my old allotment, is under threat.

Slavering feral packs of dogs roam Stoke?

Has anyone seen the slavering feral packs of dogs which The Sentinel newspaper would like us to think are roaming the city? No, me neither...

Figures obtained by The Sentinel reveal more than 2,700 dogs have been found abandoned in Stoke-on-Trent or seen wandering the city’s streets since January 2012. [...] 2,000 of the dogs were rescued from the streets and taken to kennels. A further 700 animals were reported to be 'roaming' the city.

The Sentinel is sensationally conflating dogs merely reported as "seen wandering" with actually "abandoned" dogs. Despite the Council's growing budget for stray dog catching services — running at £63,000 a year in 2014/15 (the amount is from an FOI request) — there were reportedly 700 uncatchable roaming dogs reported over the last two years. That appears to equal less than one report of a stray dog per day anywhere in the city: of the 'the Council located it and tried to catch it, it wasn't friendly and ran away' type, perhaps indicating it was a hardened stray. But possibly these "700" dogs were actually multiple public reports of the same dogs — The Sentinel gives no estimate of the total for 'identified dogs known to have been on the loose for more than x amount of time'. I'd expect it's no more than a dozen genuine 'one-month abandoned' starving dogs across the whole city, even in the summer.

There is of course a potential impact on wildlife from a build-up of stray dogs, since even normal dog-walking has been proven to scare away around a third of all the birds from parks and conservation areas. So the threat of a build up of stray dogs would need to be dealt with, if it were to happen. It doesn't appear to be happening. Although the City Council has reportedly cut the weekend and evening working hours for its dog wardens, the overall dog-catching budget has actually gone up for 2015, and the cuts to overtime hours don't appear to have made things worse.

I've done a lot of walking and cycling through the city during the last few years, and I don't think I've ever seen a genuine rough-looking stray dog once. The real menace to pedestrians and cyclists is the deranged smaller yappy dog that gets let off the lead in a park by their owner, which then comes hurtling toward you over the grass and either leaps up and/or tries to bite your ankles.

"No legislation has been passed to outlaw traditional units for allotments"

It seems that Whitehall bullies are trying to get allotment committees to switch to metric measurements. Presumably they're doing this at the behest of the EU. But the British Weights and Measures Association is writing to local newspapers to inform people that...

"We want to assure councils and allotment holders that Mr Johnson is wrong. No legislation has been passed to outlaw traditional units for allotments. When drafting metric regulations in the mid-1990s, the government exempted ‘transactions by specification’, of which allotment contracts are an example. Rods, poles, perches, yards and lugs have existed for hundreds of years in Britain, and we hope that councils and allotment holders continue to use them for centuries to come." — JOHN GARDNER Director, British Weights and Measures Association.

Gone to pot

Well well... Hartshill is in the news today for 'allotment' gardening, although of a very dodgy kind: "Police seize more than £20k worth of cannabis after raiding Hartshill business". I quite often walk up through Hartshill Park to flex the hip, do a bit of shopping at the Tesco mini-store there and post some letters, and I'd noticed the partial re-emergence of the very dodgy looking spare-tires and supposed car-repair place, which looked rather out-of-place. As I walked past it I once or twice got some hard stares from the guys who seemed to be running it, though usually there was no-one to be seen out at the front of the car entrance. Now I see the possible reason for their wariness.

Penkhull Wassail 2015: two new photo galleries

Andy White followed the procession and performances for the inaugural Penkhull Wassail 2015 thoughout, with his camera, and now has two excellent sets of photos (one and two) online at Facebook.

Wassail at the Honeywall: video

My little video of last night's Wassail, at the Honeywall and Beehive pub section of the procession, very near the allotments...

Penkhull New Year Wassail

Pictures from the Penkhull New Year Wassail, with the Domesday Morris processing a crowd down from Penkhull to the Beehive and the White Lion pubs, on the Honeywall, where they performed in the pub yards...