Sir – I read with interest your story last week about the micro-hydro project that is to be built at Osney Lock.

I also read it with concern, as every angler and naturalist who lives along the length of the Thames, knows these micro-hydro projects will kill fish.

The Environment Agency, which is a government agency paid for by you and me through our taxes, there to protect our environment, has a statutory duty to maintain, improve and develop fisheries and to meet demanding standards of the Water Framework Directive, yet condones the killing of fish.

On the hydro project at Gunthorpe on the River Trent the plant is allowed to kill 100 course fish and up to 10 game fish in any 24-hour period before being shut down. I would imagine a similar agreement exists at Osney.

I would encourage all angling clubs along the Thames to talk to the Angling Trust and the Upper Thames Consultative about this situation.

I also wonder what the Environment Agency fisheries team at Wallingford thinks about the killing of fish that they have most likely stocked into the Thames. Can the Thames sustain the deaths of maybe hundreds of fish?

Your story last week tells us that there could be mini-hydro projects built on every weir along the Thames from Radcot to Shiplake. I wonder how many of these projects would ever get off the ground if they were not subsidised by the Green Tax.

Every household in this country pays this stealth tax and we were all promised that our energy bills would come tumbling down. I haven’t noticed any difference yet.

Andy Webber, Oxford