Whitewash:-

Always more difficult to apply than thought
Doesn't cover as well as thought
Never lasts as long as thought
Needs continual re-application
Always results in personal staining

Of who gets stained only time will tell...

Hydro Beats Windmills - Again...

More observations...  just spotted that yet again - the miniscule installed base of hydro electricity has produced more power when it's actually needed than all the windmills:

Which makes it all the more exasperating that the generation of hydro electricity at Avoncliff is still stalled by the antics of the Environment Agency. If you're curious you can see what the present state of electricity generation in the UK is right this minute on the power dashboard for the country at http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/  which is where we grabbed this graph.

According to DECC there's no Hydro Project at Avoncliff

Just an observation - the on-line DECC Renewable Energy mapping (data courtesy of The Environment Agency one has to assume) at http://restats.decc.gov.uk/app/pub/map/map/  shows no hydro project at either Avoncliff or Kingston Mills in Bradford on Avon.

The Freshford scheme at Farthingham weir is in there though...

Avoncliff invisible then?  Now why might this be? I'm sure it's just a simple oversight.

The Story Part 1 and some Juicy FoI

OK ... here we go - we will be putting up a series of posts covering the timeline of the North Mill project and fusing what we knew at any particular time with what we now know was going on inside the Environment Agency, supported by original documents from our archives including Freedom of Information disclosures from The Environment Agency. The names of all the players will NOT be redacted.   For the curious ... who want to jump ahead a bit perhaps  - we've put a batch of scans on the main web server.  We'll give our own interpretation of what the FoI docs show - but visitors are welcome to speculate in the comments (erm... within reason).

There we were - in September 2009 looking at a comprehensive refurbishment of a water mill building that had been derelict for 35+ years. We had discussed the hydro electricity aspects of the project and done our own research and decided that rather than "DIY it" - we would engage a specialist, experienced project agent with a track record and of known good standing and use equipment of proven performance from established manufacturers.

One of our agent's first actions was to ask The Environment Agency if there were any other schemes nearby.....

So...  no other schemes at the statutory licence stage then...

We tried... honestly.

We didn't want to prejudice or poison the process and for three years we've essentially kept "mum" about the actual details of the to-ing and fro-ing of things between us and the EA hoping to resolve things - it seems that approach was doomed...

Trouble is, the EA don't appear to want to modify the way they discharge their statutory duties - which in essence seems to be arbitrarily "our way or no way" regardless of their clear statutory duty - and to reinforce that approach with a haughtily delivered blizzard of distortions, misdirections, procedural deviations coupled to a persistent stubborn refusal to communicate what is actually going on - an appetite for threatening language is in there too.

We wrote to Dr Paul Leinster over a month ago (advising that we would publish the letter if no attempt was made to address our concerns)

we urge you to have a look at that letter (opens in Google viewer)

and the subsequent 

 Dr. Leinster's reply (opens in Google viewer) 

as you can see - simply ignores the issues we raised in our letter of complaint.

We've asked what's going on with the latest round of licence determinations (which are going to fail - that much is clear) and the EA have refused point blank to communicate with us and have stuck a £37,500 price tag on supplying information via Freedom of Information and demanded that the applicants at Avoncliff supply an extraordinary and unprecedented range of information to them - some of which can't be honestly supplied without access to a functional crystal ball and much of which is intrusive and irrelevant to the determination of a water licence.

Given what we know of previous EA intrigue and scheming - it's clear that the information demanded (non supply of which "could be detrimental to your application") is a bit like the besiegers demanding to know of the besieged "how many bullets do you have left?"

Our present pile of Environment Agency supplied Freedom of Information Responses