The EA, hydro schemes, licenses and responsibility

The Environment Agency's latest (2012) guidelines for hydro schemes ...

EA Hydro GPG Guidelines PDF

According to this (final paragraph...) - the license holder is obligated to maintain river levels and have complete control  over the operation of the scheme.

It would appear that the present license holder at Avoncliff is MIA - and what is known as "hands off flow" is not being maintained by the license holder as obligated under the terms of the license.

Walking Along The River One Day I Met The EA

There's a book been written .... and it's actually being published - largely, but not exclusively about Avoncliff - the working title is the same as the title of this post.

The quantity of bad behavior from officials at the Environment Agency and their persistence in attempting to evade taking responsibility for their officials antics are both simply unacceptable. The story of the debacle at Avoncliff gets detailed and comprehensive coverage in the book.

In addition - you might, and then again you probably didn't know that Avoncliff has been the subject of a 2 year inquiry by the  Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman - which is.... excoriating.

It is our intention to publish the Ombudsman report here on the blog.

This first PHSO report only covers half of the hydropower saga at Avoncliff .... and the second (and arguably even more toxic) half of the administration of the hydropower impoundment licensing - (post 2012) is awaiting examination....











  

The Moon Photobombs Earth

Quite an unusual view of our planet and its biggest satellite taken from a NASA satellite in an unusual (and quite tricky) orbit around the sun-Earth first Lagrange point (where the gravitational pull of Earth is equal and opposite of that of the sun)

More detail at WattsUpWithThat 

Coming up....  some updates on personnel to-ings and fro-ings at The Environment Agency. We understand that some of our old chums have been (suddenly and quietly)  put out to pasture.... - we' like to take the opportunity to remind some of our "regular readers" that that is not going to make a deal of difference here at this stage - unless they were up to no good in other areas too....?

Some more random stuff ....   if you were wondering about Turkey and the Middle East and even thinking why...?  what on earth is going on ...? I recommend this article