Angling Trust Angry at ‘Shambolic’ EA

[bennygesserit]

Originally Posted by Jeff Woodhouse

Well, rude and abrupt depends on where you stand on this issue. Seems to me (and this is not an insult) that you are rather soft on this issue and kind-of side with the developer. Pondy has placed himself in the 'political' arena and once you do that people want to know what qualifications you speak with and how involved are you (financially/professionally etc.), especially when that same person rejects papers composed by another leading authority. It's tit-for-tat and can get even dirtier at times, but we didn't ask for a hydro scheme so if Pondy wants one and does want to consult he has to put up with some **** shovelling! Fact of life.

So, I will be direct with Pondy and ask (PLEASE)

a) have you been in contact with other local angling clubs and if so which ones?

b) what other naturalist groups around Abingdon have you been in contact with?

c) what species of bats habitate the area?

There you go, simple questions. Polite too, I believe.

yes much better Jeff , my apologies to you and Jerry keyboard and beer don't always mix.

As for the soft comment , probably a fair one but I would have said impartial.

The points about the greenness and worthiness of the project are irrelevant , its not up to me how people spend their own money , yes I know the FITs mean that we are subsidising the project but all governments have agreed to these in one form or another - its all about targets.

So if you ignore the subsidy and or the green issue, if the blades don't hurt the fish ( which I am convinced of ) , if there will be improved fish passes and these will be monitored then what are we left with ?

Just the enviro impact ! And that really isn't resolved at all is it ? Not to me anyway, now if its just in this one isolated area then I think some impact could be tolerated unless the site is a SSSI or some unique flora or fauna live there.

But I was trying to find out how many miles of river there are and divide that by the number of possible hydro schemes, so maybe if that results in one every 20 miles then again to me the impact ( once its determined by studies ) would be negligible , but if its one a mile then that is a different story.

---------- Post added at 19:22 ---------- Previous post was at 19:17 ----------

As for the photos , yes you are right they are factually correct in the strictest sense but surely you must agree Jeff because they are out of date they are deliberately mis leading.

[barbelboi]

Benny, no apologies necessary, I’ve been round the block a few times and I have no issue with criticism, whether I believe it's unfounded or otherwise. I will however attempt to explain my comments if I believe they have been misinterpreted – otherwise I don’t expect us all to always have the same opinion, if so the thread would be dead.
Jerry
PS If you try harder I'm sure you could lose that '2' from your signature and join the the real club

[pondy]

Originally Posted by Jeff Woodhouse

Well, rude and abrupt depends on where you stand on this issue. Seems to me (and this is not an insult) that you are rather soft on this issue and kind-of side with the developer. Pondy has placed himself in the 'political' arena and once you do that people want to know what qualifications you speak with and how involved are you (financially/professionally etc.), especially when that same person rejects papers composed by another leading authority. It's tit-for-tat and can get even dirtier at times, but we didn't ask for a hydro scheme so if Pondy wants one and does want to consult he has to put up with some **** shovelling! Fact of life.

So, I will be direct with Pondy and ask (PLEASE)

a) have you been in contact with other local angling clubs and if so which ones?

b) what other naturalist groups around Abingdon have you been in contact with?

c) what species of bats habitate the area?

There you go, simple questions. Polite too, I believe.[COLOR=Silver]

a) So far I have been in touch with the Oxford and Abingdon Angling Alliance, I recieved a list of other clubs yesterday and will contact some of them in due course. I have also been trying to get hold of the Abingdon water bailiff but not managed to get an answer yet.
b) The Abingdon Naturalists Society, who carried out our environmental survey, one of our directors is in contact with other groups, I don't know who these are but she is talking to them currently about possible environmental impact.
c) We are having a full bat survey carried out next month I believe, we have already carried out a survey using thermal imaging about a year ago with the daughter of one of our directors who is a qualified bat expert, although the bats use the area we could find no evidence that they actually inhabit the immediate area.

That's much better, please ask questions like this and you will get proper answers, I really can't be doing with all the other ****.

Lets draw a line under all the previous stuff and start again but please be constructive. if the **** comes back I'm out of here!

[bennygesserit]

First of all thanks Jerry.

Secondly having just started re-reading this thread from the beginning a remark by Chub on the block struck me , in reality is the screw at Abingdon merely replacing one impeding structure , or at least a portion of it , with another ?

I put it in bold because its a way of thinking of it , obvious really , that I hadn't thought of before.

[chub_on_the_block]

Originally Posted by bennygesserit

First of all thanks Jerry.

Secondly having just started re-reading this thread from the beginning a remark by Chub on the block struck me , in reality is the screw at Abingdon merely replacing one impeding structure , or at least a portion of it , with another ?

I put it in bold because its a way of thinking of it , obvious really , that I hadn't thought of before.

I would visualise it as changing the effect of the existing impoundment, as the flow will be directed across a small part of it (ie through the screw), with a reduced sweetening flow over the rest of the structure. This is why i could imagine it causing major changes to water movements, sediment transport and aeration in the weirpool, affecting the nature of the weirpool as a habitat. Reduced flow over parts of the existing weir structure may also increase rates of siltation immediately upstream of the weir, although this would be a localised effect.

A weir i know on the Cam at Byrons Pool Cambridge is a good example of how an ugly concrete structure can ruin a beauty spot (once the place where Byron and other Bohemian writers and poets swam apparently) and affect a river channel downstream because of the way it directs flow to one side. In this case there is no more than a trickle of water over a 15-20m concrete sill across the full width of the river apart from an offset notch used to gauge river flow by the EA under the left bank where 99.999% of the flow cascades about 2m wide to the weirpool downstream (the sill being overtopped only during floods).

Below the ugly structure most of the the channel towards the right bank therefore has slack water which had become deeply silted up, whilst above the sill material such as duckweed, fallen leaves etc accumulate in summer (it is actually un-fishable for about 30 yards upstream so thick is the scum). Last year, however, a fish bypass channel was built by the EA and this introduces a sweetening flow into the pool from the right hand side and this has transformed the character of the pool in this vicinity for the better - revealing old river gravels previously buried under silt. It also enables fish movements past this barrier.

Whilst the extreme design of Byrons weir was not the result of a hydropower scheme, but rather more a product of some short-sighted river engineers in the 1970s who would have been better employed constructing high-rise car parks, the principle concern is similar with respect to the Abingdon proposal: the force of water flow will be concentrated in a small proportion of an existing weirpool, outside of spate events, which is likely to change the water movement, turbulence, morphology and bed of the weirpool with potential impacts upon fish spawning grounds, aeration and local ecology.

[bennygesserit]

Chub if the screw is gathering part of the flow alongside the weir won't it simply take a proportion of that flow?

When the flow of the river is too low the screw won't operate , it will also be turned off to enable canoeists to enjoy their hobby.

If you combine this with occasional high water levels wouldn't that be enough to prevent massive silting ?

[chub_on_the_block]

Originally Posted by bennygesserit

Chub if the screw is gathering part of the flow alongside the weir won't it simply take a proportion of that flow?

When the flow of the river is too low the screw won't operate , it will also be turned off to enable canoeists to enjoy their hobby.

If you combine this with occasional high water levels wouldn't that be enough to prevent massive silting ?

Under normal conditions they will be looking to take as much of the flow through the screw as they can get..maybe 80-90%? - i dont know the precise details or the nature of this weirpool. If this did cause siltation that was moved during periods of very high flow then you would still be changing the bed of the weirpool and introducing an unstable habitat into areas of it. When this silt gets stripped out by spates coming back over the weir it would take all the invertebrates etc with it. But i dont know whether this could happen there or not - its the sort of thing that would need to assessed by an expert in sediment transport etc.

[bennygesserit]

Originally Posted by chub_on_the_block

Under normal conditions they will be looking to take as much of the flow through the screw as they can get..maybe 80-90%? - i dont know the precise details or the nature of this weirpool. If this did cause siltation that was moved during periods of very high flow then you would still be changing the bed of the weirpool and introducing an unstable habitat into areas of it. When silt gets stripped out by extreme flow it would take all the invertebrates etc with it. But i dont know whether this could happen there or not - its the sort of thing that would need to assessed by an expert in sediment transport etc.

Wouldn't you need the equivalent of a massive funnel to get 80-90 percent of the flow , lets say that the screw width is 10 percent of the width of the weir ( no idea if that is correct ) doesn't that mean that it can only take 10 percent of the flow ?

Oh hang on do they put an additional structure behind the screw to divert water into it ?

[chub_on_the_block]

Their abstraction licence will show the volume of water they can use. If you compare that to the flow in the river at different times you can see what proportion of flow will be redirected through the screw route and see how much less will go over the existing weir down the full width of the channel.

At present there appears to be fast moving water across the width of channel below the weir. In future it may be directed along one bank only where the screw will be, or it might be angled in towards the channel centre, but there will be slow-flowing areas where at present it is fast. If i had fished this pool i would have a better idea of what areas may be threatened, but i have never been there.

[pondy]

Originally Posted by bennygesserit

First of all thanks Jerry.

Secondly having just started re-reading this thread from the beginning a remark by Chub on the block struck me , in reality is the screw at Abingdon merely replacing one impeding structure , or at least a portion of it , with another ?

I put it in bold because its a way of thinking of it , obvious really , that I hadn't thought of before.

The structure will go next to an existing weir/ impeding structure, I would have preferred to have put it on the weir effectively replacing part of the existing but for various reasons, one of which is it would reduce the EA's flood control, it was decided not to go for that option.