[imc-sheffield] Linking Sheffield to Climate Camp

[worldwarfree at riseup.net]

Be more than happy to html this below, just going to propose a front page
artical for sheffield, and a link to the main artical on climate camp, a
local issue involving e-on if people want to do a re write then cool just
i feel it would be good to see as a front page..

https://publish.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/08/405234.html?c=on#c201100

So, the Tinsley cooling towers are coming down on the 24 8 08 at 3am we
are told, we have been a little busy and circumspect as much as we can be
when there is cctv all over the place.

That is problem one, but where there is a will there is a means, is there
not. Yep, we would like the challenge plus fun of it all, it only comes
down to trespass (forgive those who trespass against us and those we
trespass against) and a little walking, this in mind strong footwear, a
willingness to push it a little and we might just end up being the last
people to document those cooling towers.

To the plan, we feel a meet on the 9th Aug 08 could be a cool idea, now we
ask you to contact us for time location and the rest of our thoughts, you
never know who could reading.

We need more than six people to make this happen no more than 12, as
getting that lot to where we need them to be could prove a little hard.

Only people who are calm relaxed and cool please, as this is a direct
action assault on the cooling towers with an aim of getting some media
coverage and just fucking off E-ON and there rudeness and inconsideration
at the demolition of a Sheffield Landmark.

If you are up for a little bit of Direct Action, a desire to get some
images plus make a point then contact us..

HISTORY

Blackburn Meadows electricity generating station was built by the
Sheffield Corporation in 1921,mainly to support the steel industry in the
Lower Don Valley. The station was expanded in the 1930s, requiring the
construction of Cooling Towers 6 and 7 in 1937-8 to supplement earlier
square cooling towers to the north east.

These new hyperbolic shaped towers were designed by LG Mouchell and
Partners. This was the same partnership responsible for the first
hyperbolic cooling towers in the country (built in Liverpool in 1925) and
some 150 towers subsequently built across the United Kingdom. Blackburn
Meadows was one of those power stations nationalised to form part of the
National Grid after the Second World War. It was decommissioned and mainly
demolished in the 1970s.

ASSESSMENT

The Blackburn Meadows cooling towers are nationally rare surviving remains
of pre-nationalisation large scale electricity generation. They are
thought to be the only pre-1950 hyperbolic cooling towers surviving
nationally, with nearly all the other 500 or so towers in the country
dating to 1960or later. In addition to their early date, the association
with LG Mouchell, the design features such as the banding and the thinness
of the shell all give the towers interest. The addition of the spray
coating of concrete following the 1964 disaster at Ferrybridge adds
further interest by showing a development in the industry.

Even without the clouds of steam that signify operational examples, the
cooling towers are also very prominent landmark features, providing a
visual indication of the former scale and importance of the Sheffield
steel industry in the Lower Don Valley.

However the two hyperbolic cooling towers are just one component of an
extensive complex that formerly existed. The plant at Blackburn Meadows
generated electricity by using steam turbines to turn electric generators,
with the steam produced using coal fired boilers, the coal supplied by
rail.

The railway system, coal handling plant, boiler complex, turbine and
generating halls, as well as the switchgear for connecting the plant to
the electricity grid and the earlier square cooling towers have all been
lost. Water used by the steam turbines would have been maintained within a
closed system, the steam leaving the turbine then passing through a
condenser to change it back to hot water before being reboiled to produce
steam to turn the turbine.

The cooling towers were used to cool water circulating in a separate
system that was used to cool the condensers other equipment.

With the demolition of the rest of the generating station, the surviving
cooling towers have lost their context so it is difficult to see how they
functioned as an integrated part of a much wider plant.

Functionally, cooling towers still in use consist of far more than just
the shell of the tower that survives at Blackburn Meadows. In operation,
water is piped into the lower portion of the cooling tower into a complex
network of pipes or troughs ending with sprinklers.

A fine mist of water is then sprayed on to a timber or asbestos lattice of
staging and screens filling the lower 4-5m of the tower, with the water
being cooled via natural evaporation aided by air being drawn upwards by
the tower above. Any water droplets carried by this updraft are
intercepted by a layer of louvers positioned above the sprinklers. In
addition, operational cooling towers have a network of maintenance access
ways. All bar one pipe in one of the towers has been stripped out from the
cooling towers at Blackburn Meadows, leaving very little indication of how
the towers actually functioned.

The Blackburn Meadows cooling towers are thus not only a very partial
survival of an electricity generating station, they are also only a very
partial survival of a pair of cooling towers. Even given the national
context of the highly fragmentary survival of the pre-nationalisation
power generation industry, designation of the Blackburn Meadows cooling
towers cannot be justified.

The rest of the generating station has been lost, depriving the towers of
their functional context and the loss of pipe work, staging, screens and
access ways means that a highly significant part of the interest of the
towers as cooling towers has also been lost.

www.tinsley-towers.org.uk/pages/english_heritage.pdf

If you've ever driven into Sheffield from the M1, you'll be familiar with
the Tinsley Cooling Towers - a piece of industrial landscape that's become
one of the city's most famous landmarks. For now at least.

Three quarters of the public want them saved

The BBC online poll established
www.bbc.co.uk/southyorkshire/content/image_galleries/tins... that three
quarters of the public want them saved. This makes more than half a
million supporters in Sheffield and Rotherham alone. E.ON's own poll was
flawed by a mix-up of criteria.

English Heritage wrote
www.tinsley-towers.org.uk/pages/english_heritage.pdf that the Towers,
built in 1938, are the oldest surviving hyperbolic Cooling Towers in the
UK and that their prominence provides a visual indication of the former
scale and importance of Sheffield’s steel industry.

A scheme valued at £60m for a 'green' power station in Tinsley was
approved a few weeks back, despite concerns that it could add to pollution
in part of Sheffield with some of the worst pollution levels.Councilors
backed the project for the site of the old Blackburn Meadows power
station, next to the doomed cooling towers, after being told that it will
generate renewable energy for 40,000 homes.

Power company E.On UK wants to burn waste wood and other biomass fuels,
such as specially grown crops including willow and elephant grass.

Will this mean more pollution for the people of this area? Yes it will why
not turn the whole lot with the towers standing into a nature reserve
right up to back of Magana, use the derelict railway line at an extension
for Supertram to Rotherhem with a stop at Magana onto the nature reserve
and then one at the new business park just afther Magana, turn over the
derelict land at Sheffield Road over to community allotments and get E-ON
and Medowhell to donate some cash for the planting of Chery blossoms
around the area both would take out a lot of pollution in the area.

The towers are going, but do have to except the plans for this area? and
if the owners of Medowhell (British Land) get there way yet more increased
traffic and pollution for the people of this area, never mind the loss of
our social heritage of Sheffield Steal, we only need to look at Williams
Fasteners Green Lane Shalesmoor Sheffield to see the total disregard of
our heritage,
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucible_steel see urban explores reports
here  http://www.derelictplaces.co.uk/main/showthread.php?t=6036

As a week of action  http://indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/07/404961.html starts
over E-ON,s plans in Kent we need to look towards alternatives 
http://projectsheffield.wordpress.com/2008/07/14/dear-camp-for-climate-action
More here  http://www.tinsley-towers.org.uk and there is more reading google
Tinsley Cooling Towers, Sheffield - Icons of England or got 
http://pretentiousartist.com