The latest news on the Hydro Scheme
30/08/2008
We are well into August now and after several
months of regular meetings with the Council
things are moving forward slowly. The original
idea of a kaplin turbine (like the one at Sion
mills)has been shelved and in its place is an
idea for an Archimedes screw type turbine.Bobby
Rodgers and Shane Colgan have been to the River
Dart at Ashburton in England to look at a similar
scheme and have reported back that they think it
is very fish friendly.We have had a fishery
expert in Omagh two weeks ago and he has
confirmed the test results from this scheme. This
is fine for salmon smolts going downstream but we
have serious concerns about how the adult salmon
are going to return upstream to spawn. We
mentioned an idea to the fishery expert about
creating a wider and deeper than normal fish pass
between the two weirs and he thought that this
was definetly a good idea and would need to be
looked at before the scheme went ahead. I will
keep the site updated with all the latest news on
this scheme.
