SUNDAY, AUGUST 9, 2020 13
NMERSHAM, England — The fields
around the quiet village of Mersham, just
20 miles from the white cliffs of Dover,
are a vision of idyllic English country-
side. Lush, green trees sway above
rolling acres of golden wheat. The spire
of a 13th-century church looms on the ho-
rizon.
But soon, something far less charming
could mar this pastoral vista: a 27-acre
parking lot with hundreds — even thou-
sands — of idling trucks. If Britain’s exit
from the European Union causes the
chaos many fear, up to 2,000 vehicles
headed for France could be held at a time
here in an asphalt Brexit purgatory.
Four years after Britons voted nar-
rowly to leave the bloc, the implications
of that decision are dawning on some of
those who live in an area where support
for Brexit was strong. The parking area
is widely being called the Farage Garage
— a reference to Nigel Farage, the na-
tionalist politician who was one of the
loudest voices for Brexit.
“The noise and pollution would be
huge, particularly if this is a 24-hour fa-
cility,” said Liz Wright, an elected council
member in the local municipality, Ash-
ford, looking out over the site officially
known as MOJO on a recent sunny morn-
ing.
“This has happened so suddenly and
without any consultation,” added Ms.
Wright, a Green Party member who
voted to leave the European Union in
2016 — as did 6 in 10 voters here — but
said she did not expect this to be the re-
sult.
Back then, Leave campaigners dis-
missed their opponents’ predictions of
more bureaucracy and disruption to
trade across the English Channel as
“project fear.” Now, in the southeastern
region that calls itself the “garden of
England,” that fear has taken on a very
real, tarmac form.
Though it left the bloc on Jan. 31, Brit-
ain remains tied to Europe’s customs
system through the end of the year, so
freight still enters from the Continent
with minimal interruption. In prepara-
tion for what comes next, the govern-
ment is spending 705 million pounds —
more than $920 million — to upgrade
customs and border infrastructure.
Brexit supporters have made confi-
dent pronouncements that the new sys-
tem will barely slow the flow of goods.
But if it goes wrong, it could do serious
damage to Britain’s economy and to the
bucolic life here.
The site near Mersham is designed to
check freight traffic arriving on ferries
from France. But local politicians have
been told that if post-Brexit rule changes
bring chaos to the Channel ports, this
could also become a temporary place to
park trucks.
“People are very anxious about what
might happen,” said Damian Green, the
Conservative Party lawmaker for Ash-
ford and a former senior cabinet min-
ister.
“The worse-case scenario will be mis-
erable, possibly for a few months, but in
the best scenario it won’t have to be used
at all as an emergency lorry park,” he
said.
Kent knows all about traffic mayhem
around the Channel ports. In 2015, when
French ferry workers went on strike, a
line of 4,600 trucks stretched back 30
miles on one roadway. On that occasion,
the gridlock combined with a heat wave.
Emergency teams handed out more than
18,000 bottles of water to stranded truck-
ers, as perishable cargo went bad.
“Delays at the border could cause sig-
nificant knock-on effects for ‘just-in-
time’ supply chains, potentially precipi-
tating widespread economic disruption
while also turning parts of Kent into a
lorry park,” said a recent report from the
Institute for Government, a research or-
ganization, on what to expect in January.
Even before the government bought
the MOJO site, it was widely expected to
become a warehouse, so construction
work did not come as a surprise to many
people. But the nature of the project did.
Those who think gridlock can be
avoided include John Lang, who voted
for Brexit and has not changed his mind.
He described his home and tranquil gar-
den close to MOJO as a “little bit of para-
dise,” and was confident it would stay
that way. “It’s in everyone’s interest to
make it work,” Mr. Lang said.
Local people who wanted to stay in the
European Union feel vindicated, even if
they are reluctant to crow about it.
“I just think it’s so sad that this is an-
other bit of countryside that we have
lost,” said Sheila Catt, an administrator
in the health service. She worries about
air pollution, as well.
The problem for Mersham lies partly
in the geography of Dover, a short driveto the east, where one of the world’s busi-
est ports is crushed into a limited space
bounded by the famous white cliffs be-
hind it.
Today, as many as 10,000 trucks can
pass through the port daily, rolling on
and off ferries in a ceaseless flow of
cargo, mostly to and from Calais in
France. With Britain operating under the
European common market rules, trucks
usually clear the port of Dover in around
eight minutes. Only a tiny number of ve-
hicles are stopped.
That arrangement is scheduled to end
on Dec. 31, when Britain is expected to
chart its own course. The risk of disrup-
tion is high — adding just two minutes to
the time needed to process each truck,
the Port of Dover has estimated, could
produce a 17-mile backup.
Talks on a post-Brexit trade agree-ment between Britain and the European
Union are deadlocked. But even if they
strike a deal that eliminates tariffs, more
checks on products will be required than
at present, and there is simply no space
to perform them at Dover. So trucks will
stop in places like Mersham instead.
The chief executive officer of the port,
Doug Bannister, said that the Dover-Ca-
lais ferry route was so important eco-
nomically across Europe that any grid-
lock would very likely be resolved fast. If
there is disruption, Dover has systems in
place to clear bottlenecks relatively
quickly, he said, and Britain plans to
phase in its rule changes, giving time to
adapt.
But he acknowledged “some un-
knowns out there,” including, critically,
how French authorities will handle
freight checks at Calais. Any gridlock onone side of the Channel would spread
quickly to the other — if trucks cannot
roll off ferries, the ferries cannot load
other vehicles for the return trip.
Britain’s new system for electronic
customs declarations is still being devel-
oped, and surveys suggest that smaller
exporters are ill-prepared for the new
bureaucracy, and are preoccupied with
the coronavirus pandemic.
“I am very, very confident that there
will be no disruption on January 1 pri-
marily because it’s a bank holiday,” said
Mr. Bannister, “but January 2 may be a
different question.”
At the MOJO site, Paul Bartlett, a Con-
servative Party representative on Kent
County Council, welcomed the construc-
tion of a customs facility, and the jobs it
could bring, but opposed its use as a
holding pen for delayed trucks. “One of
the main frustrations is the lack of infor-
mation,” he said.
But sitting in the garden of the Farri-
ers Arms, a country pub in Mersham, Jo
Gregory said the implications of Brexit
were only starting to sink in.
“I don’t think people had thought it
through until recently,” said Ms. Gregory,
a sales assistant who did not vote in the
2016 referendum and still doesn’t have a
firm view of Brexit.
But she is not staying here to make up
her mind.
So worried is she about the MOJO de-
velopment that she is moving from one
village about four miles from the site to
another, Westwell, farther away.
“It’s going to be busier, it’s going to be
noisier,” she said, “and it’s bad enough
with the traffic we have at the moment.”Near Busy U.K. Port, Brexit Augurs Asphalt Purgatory
Work began last month at a 27-acre parcel at Mersham in the British countryside. It will be the site of a sprawling center for checking freight
traffic arriving in Dover by ferry. Divergent British and European Union customs requirements could cause gridlock there after Jan. 1.PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDREW TESTA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESAbove left, the M20 motorway approaching the junction where the British government is building the customs center, officially called known as MOJO. Liz Wright, above right, a
Green Party member who serves on the local council and who voted for Brexit, said, “The noise and pollution would be huge, particularly if this is a 24-hour facility.”The new customs checkpoint seems certain to alter life in bucolic Mersham. Delays in the area, a recent
report warned, could produce “economic disruption while also turning parts of Kent into a lorry park.”By STEPHEN CASTLEA nightmare vision of 2,
trucks idling at a site being
called the Farage Garage.
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