The environmental impact of constructing an entirely new railway line through the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and onwards through open countryside in Oxfordshire and Warwickshire will be enormous.
The Government has released an Appraisal of Sustainability for the route. However, this is not the detailed Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) that campaigners have been calling for. The EIA will not be completed until 2013.
Buckinghamshire County Council has undertake a “baseline environmental assessment” relating to the route. It considers Special Scientific Interest; Local Wildlife Sites; Protected Species; Scheduled Ancient Monuments; Ancient Semi-Natural Woodland; Attractive Landscape Designations; Geological Sites; Conservation Areas and Listed Buildings.
HS2 will cut through more than 25km of Green Belt land, 1.56km of Ancient Woodland, and 1.36km of Sites of Special Scientific Interest in the Buckinghamshire area alone. Within a buffer of 1km of the line, 59 different Protected Species could be impacted in Buckinghamshire.
Further reading: Wendover HS2 briefing paper on the environmental impact of HS2 (pdf file, 28KB)
Bucks County Council Baseline Environmental Assessment for the preferred HS2 route through Bucks (pdf file, 14.8MB)
