Help save the river Wear

Help save the best fishing in the North East

Durham City Council is planning to re develop the riverside at Elvet, Durham. This is where the best winter dace, roach and chub fishing in the North East can be found. The proposed plans are to build 100's of houses/apartments, bars and restaurants on the riverside upstream of the County Hotel. This will also involve new flood defence work; i.e. widening the river course by up to 3 times the current width for some 2000M and dredging the river bed (which co-incidentally fits in with the planned 2012 Olympic games) to create anew international standard rowing course. The dredging of this 2000Mwill have devastating affects on the riversystem, fish and plant life. Unearthing 100's of years of toxic waste from the areas industrial past will virtually kill the river.

Little has been made of this and the council are hoping the plans will go through unopposed, whereas when the river Tyne was to be dredged (for only a short length) to facilitate the building of the new Tyne tunnel enquiries and appeals took several years. Please visit http://www.forcitysake.org/page4.html to register your objections and support the campaigners

John, Have the EA not have some input into this and have you contacted the ACA?

Why on earth do we need a new rowing course? Isn't Holme Pierrepoint perfect for the job? Or do I sense that someone is looking to make an awful lot of money ...

"It is not possible to comment on this Application. Only Applications currently under consideration are available for comment."

"Environmental Impact Assessment Received?----No"

I;d assume from the above that it is still in it's VERY early stages?

Quotes taken from HERE

Mark, I fear you're spot on, this is about money and appeasing certain river users.

I'm quite suprised something like this hasn't been done before now on the Wear, sickening as it is the relentless march to make our waterways navigable isn't a problem exclusive to southern rivers.