Recent speculative news has been about Centreport, a proposed £2BN tidal barrage across the Wash, connecting the Lincolnshire coast with an area of outstanding natural beauty on the North Norfolk coast, which will include a giant sea container terminal in the middle. Is this ambitious or just plain daft?
At first view it seems daft, why would you want to place a giant infrastructure project in an area of relative natural peace and quiet? The project suggests that as well as being an economic development it intends to protect the local area, helping save the area from climate change and providing flood defences. An expensive 11 mile causeway will include mid-point, the world’s first tidal energy deep sea container port. The person proposing the development has developed the existing Deepwater Container Terminal in Gdansk, Poland. So it is not just speculative blue sky thinking.
This giant ambitious engineering project seems feasible, if we were the Dutch, and had their experience, expertise and commitment to managing water and land development. But we don’t. It has taken us years to build the HS2 railway line, we flunked the funding for the proposed Swansea Tidal Lagoon, so we just don’t do big engineering projects unless private capital is paying. And for those of us who love this part of the coast, really, we don’t want to see more concrete and human development on this stretch of nature, thanks all the same.
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