IN REPLY to Saskya Huggins’ comments (ViewPoints, May 3) about the Osney Lock hydropower scheme.
Low shear Archimedean screw design can never be “fish friendly” when the terms of licensing for these types of generators have included conditions which allow for up to 110 fish to be killed in each 24-hour period (up to 100 coarse fish and eels and up to ten salmon or sea trout).
I have contacted the Angling Trust technical director who has been leading for the trust on hydropower matters and quote from his email: “I am especially incensed by the EA’s active promotion of schemes on the Thames despite their admittance that they have no idea of the consequences and have failed to carry out any research, or made any developer do meaningful monitoring, for the past five years.”
The scheme at Osney is the second scheme at that site and cannot begin operating until the scheme on the other bank is operating at its maximum.
It must be an economic disaster, yet they still seem to have attracted investors willing to throw their money away.
The River Thames won a prestigious international award for the work being done to restore and improve the river.
Hydropower developments on this scale could reverse all that good work at a stroke and destroy a really valuable fishery.
These proposals for the Thames are detrimental to the environment and must be stopped.
NIGEL PLUNKETT
Delbush Avenue
Sandhills
Headington
Oxford
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