Pseudo-green Nonsense…
…is all too common these days: we hear it from many quarters, but chiefly from the mouths of politicians and officialdom. The urge to be seen to be ‘greener than green’ is causing many to lose their brains.
Let me tell you the story of two very different stretches of river. First, imagine an idyllic weirpool of the classic kind. Formed from the remnants of an old, disused mill, it had a good flow of white water pouring over it for most of the year. The banks were natural clay, and the crowning feature of the place was the huge clumps of roots of giant oaks which guarded the place. It was home to some good chub and barbel. The latter drew the steady attendance of a group of anglers who fished enthusiastically for these whiskery torpedoes. The best I ever caught went 8lb 9oz: not a huge fish, but one which memories are made of. This bit of river was a mere fifteen minute drive from my home, and I counted myself very fortunate to have it on my doorstep.
The second section of river is also a weirpool. But one in which there is normally only a trickle of water coming over the sill. The water below looks lifeless. And every twenty minutes or so the pool erupts with foam, the water level rises a foot, and the whole thing resembles a giant jacuzzi. Attempts to fish there produce few bites. In fact it is hardly fished at all. And to cap it all, the sloping banks are covered in large stones encased in strong steel cages. And of course, overhanging trees and bushes have been removed. It is like a natural, productive bit of river which has been wantonly turned into a canal.
In case you haven’t guessed it yet, the two weir pools are one and the same: before and after the building of a run-of-the-river hydroelectric installation there, that is.
The installation, which took two years to build, and involved a temporary diversion of the river as well, of course, as the intensive use of fossil fuels and labour, was designed to supply a nearby grand house with electricity. The official version claims that it produces a surplus which is sold back into the national grid. Rumour has it however that the thing does not even generate enough to cover the needs of the house. And its influence has without a doubt caused environmental damage and ruined formerly prolific coarse fishing and fish habitat for a mile or so upstream and the same distance downstream.
So it was with dismay that I learned, via an Angling Trust press release, of the Environment Agency’s promotion of this type of river hydroelectric scheme. The EA has identified 26,000 possible sites for such damaging projects. This will delight the hydropower engineers, but it should have quite the opposite effect on anglers. Especially as the EA is thinking of placing ‘gagging orders’ on its specialist fishery staff, preventing them from speaking out with evidence against the implementation of run-of-the-river schemes. These fisheries specialists are of course the very people whose existence you, the angler, funds through his EA rod licence.
Any knowledgeable on such matters will tell you that hydroelectricity is only a practical, economic proposition in mountainous areas, where a steep drop produces the necessary energy potential. English and Welsh rivers are simply not big enough to make any noticeable contribution to UK energy needs. The EA calculates that the sites (26,000 of them remember) they have pinpointed for hydropower schemes have a total generating potential of 580 MW, or to put it another way, enough to cover a miniscule 0.5% of the UK’s electricity needs. It is clear that on this basis that the initial outlay on production and installation can never be recovered. This is the kind of pseudo-green nonsense officialdom gets involved in when it is meeting green energy targets and placing ticks in boxes to demonstrate how much it is contributing towards protection of the environment.
The reality is the very opposite of course. Even relatively large hydropower schemes of this type are now being dismantled on mainland Europe and in the USA. There they have had to learn the hard way how much damage such schemes cause. Why should the UK have to go through the whole costly process just to arrive at the very same conclusions in the end, especially as so much excellent fish habitat and fishing will be destroyed in so doing?
So the question is, as ever: what should anglers be doing about this impending threat to the environment and to their sport? Well, given the huge number of sites which could be ruined, the likelihood is that there is at least one very near to any one of you reading this. So a good move would be to go to the EA website and look under: ‘applications for full licences to abstract or impound water’. And lend your weight to the fight against such schemes, and for that matter against the large number of other threats to angling, by joining the Angling Trust, and by raising objections to particular schemes. I often hear the question asked: ‘Why should I join the Angling Trust, when I’ve already paid my rod licence fee to the Environment Agency?’ I hope this article answers that question. We anglers need an independent organisation to fight our corner. So visit the Angling Trust at: ‘www.anglingtrust.net’, and learn more about matters you should be involved in, and if you are a member of a club, it should be involved as well…
Rod Sturdy
