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The Aire Rivers Trust was formed in 2011 and, at present, is concentrating on improving fish passage, river clean ups, educational projects, water quality issues, improved access and eradication of alien invasive plant species.
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Some progress in improving fish passage on the Aire has been made over the last few years. The Environment Agency fish passes at Fleet and Lemonroyd were both finally opened in 2004. Castleford fish pass was opened in 2007 and Rodley in 2012. There is a strong possibility that a further five or more will be opened in 2014 / 2015. If these go ahead, the biggest remaining barrier will be at Knottingley. Other major weirs in Leeds and downstream which will still require fish passes are at Chapel Haddlesey, Armley, Kirkstall Abbey and Newlay.
The Canal and River Trust is still progressing its hydro / fish pass scheme on the tidal weir at Chapel Haddlesey (near Eggborough Power Station). The scheme, first proposed in 2008, is still in the planning / discussion stage.
Knottingley Weir remains one of the biggest barriers to fish passage on the Aire and Calder river system. The weir does flood out in periods of heavy rainfall and migratory fish do ascend it at those times. Unfortunately, upstream progress can be delayed for a number of months in dry summers.
The Canal and River Trust (CRT) has withdrawn its expressed interest in a hydro on the weir which means that public funding can now be used to obtain a fish pass. Discussions are ongoing between CRT, the Environment Agency and Wakefield Council to explore the possibility of including a fish pass in a wider regeneration scheme within the Knottingley area.
Leeds Council obtained funding for the Leeds Flood Alleviation Scheme (FAS) in early 2013. The FAS envisages removal of the weirs at Knostrop and Crown Point and their replacement with moveable weirs which can be opened when the river is in flood.
Leeds Council expects to commence work on the two fish passes in January 2014 and completion by December 2014. Knostrop Weir has long been the biggest impediment to fish passage on the River Aire and it is believed that fish cannot ascend the present weir. The planned fish pass there will allow migratory fish to progress through the centre of Leeds as far as Armley, if not further.
Although discussions are continuing between Leeds Council and the Environment Agency regarding a joint fish pass / hydro scheme at Armley, progress has more or less come to a halt.
The Aire Rivers Trust and Leeds Council have been successful in their bid for Catchment Restoration Funding to improve fish passage at these two weirs. Preliminary work is already in progress and the fish passage work is scheduled to be completed by March 2015.
Yorkshire Water’s fish pass at Rodley Nature Reserve opened in late 2012. Minor alterations and improvements have been carried out since that time and work is now complete although the fish pass has not been officially opened as yet. There will be restricted access to the fish pass but the public will be allowed to visit the fish pass on conducted tours by prior arrangement with Rodley Nature Reserve.
Bradford Council’s proposed hydro / fish pass is still under consultation. The Council’s proposals can be seen by looking at Hydro Power Scheme – Saltaire on the internet.
Other searches:Hydropower
Documents: Feasibility Report (PDF 15.35 MB, 142 A4 pages).
The Aire Rivers Trust (ART) is neither supporting nor opposing the hydro / fish pass scheme as it believes that the decision should be left to local people. ART has made some constructive comments as regards the design of the proposed fish pass. Whether the hydro goes ahead or not, ART would hope that the Council can find funding for a fish pass on this major barrier to fish passage.
During the high river levels in summer 2012, the weir at Hirst Mill became unstable and Bradford Amateur Rowing Club had to carry out emergency repairs. The repairs involved the placement of a large amount of stone in the river below the weir. The Rowing Club is looking at a long term solution which may well consist of a rock ramp fish pass which will also support the structure of the weir.
With the intention of putting a fish pass on this weir, the Aire Rivers Trust commissioned a feasibility study for a fish pass and received the results of the study in autumn 2012. Since that time the management at Systagenix (formerly known as Johnson & Johnson) has been obliged to cease taking water from the weir goit and the weir is now effectively redundant.
As far as is known, to date no decision has been made as to whether weir removal is an option or how fish passage can be improved for the long term.
BHS – British Hydrological society
CIWEM – Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management
The British Hydrological Society (BHS) and CIWEM have a joint meeting at Sheffield University on 3 July. (Hydro-Power for Hydrologists.)
Lancaster University are hosting a British Hydrological Society meeting and workshop on 11th/ 12th July 2013 entitled ‘Data-based mechanistic methods for hydrological modelling, forecasting and emulation: research and water sector applications’.
The 3 BHS meetings held in Leeds (Jan, Feb, Mar) are available online. Streaming Audio with .PPT
I intend to update these as more meetings com up or media from past meetings come available.
According to The Wharfedale Observer News
A Horsforth councillor has backed plans to change the route of a footpath to make it safer and to improve the view for walkers.
The plans will see an existing footpath close to Woodhouse Grove School in Apperley Bridge amended to make it safer for users by taking its route away from shared vehicle access and instead take it along the river Aire, improving the riverside views for walkers.
It will also add a total of 86 metres to the Leeds Country Way along the banks of the River Aire.
Councillor Dawn Collins said: “I am glad that, working with Bradford Council and Woodhouse Grove School, we are able to make this change.
“The current path begins in an area with shared vehicular access and, as a result, these changes will take walkers away from the threat posed by moving traffic.
“It is also pleasing that there will now be more attractive riverside views for walkers, hopefully making it a more popular route and increasing its usage by local people.
“Of course it will now have improved links to the Leeds Country Way so it will offer walkers in Horsforth better access to that route as well. I would also like to thank Woodhouse Grove School for their co-operation with this project.”
It is a question which I often hear from anglers when they cough up their hard-earned cash every year to pay for their fishing licence: “What does the Environment Agency do with the money?”
Apart from a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes, such as flood defence and pollution issues plus administration costs which receive very little publicity, one of their major projects is at Calverton in Nottinghamshire which is the home of a huge fish farm.
The main species bred there are barbel, chub and roach plus many other species and the resulting fish are used to replenish stocks all over the country.
The latest figures released by the Environment Agency show that over the past year more than 400,000 fish will have been released with our region, the North East, gaining the biggest share with 20 per cent of the haul, which works out at around 83,500 fish. The North West and Midlands both collected 15 per cent (63,000).
The numbers of the various species stocked were chub (91,000), barbel (67,000), roach (56,000), grayling (54,000), rudd (46,000), bream (39,000), tench (37,000) and dace (18,000).
I reported recently that the River Aire below Keighley and several other places down to Thwaites Mill in Leeds had had an influx of barbel in the eight- to-nine inch category and these were thriving for fish from an earlier stocking a few years ago are now in the four-pound class.
From an article in The Yorkshire Evening Post on 27 February 2013
Folks
If you are on Facebook, please note the new Friends of Bradford Beck page, (Page is now a Group with a slightly different name and a new address) and like it!
http://www.facebook.com/groups/421086317957469/
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Barney
Director
Mob:
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Michael C
Project Officer
Mob:
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David B
Aire Rivers Trust website admin
Mob:
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phone no.s available via contacts page
Way back in December (19th) a flyer made the rounds by eMail for a local open day as part of the Winter closures program original planned for 27th January at Dowley Gap Locks and the Seven Arches Aqueduct
Due to the inclement weather i.e. the freeze, the work has been postponed and the Open day rearranged for 17th February, we learned in an email of
An article by Martin Wainwright about this was published in the Guardian and its Northerner Blog originally on the 9th January
Later post on the Guardian Northerner Blog (Jan 24th)
The original flyer is Dowley Gap Lock & Aqueduct poster
Other quite successful open days have been held on days in the past few years at other locations
At this location the Canal passes over the River Aire in an aqueduct of seven brick and stone arches. the canal has been leaking quite seriously at the east end of the aqueduct
The event also appears in the events column on the Canal and Rivers Trust website
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The Canal & River Trust is a new charity entrusted with the care of 2,000 miles of waterways in England and Wales. Get involved, join us – Visit / Donate / Volunteer at www.canalrivertrust.org.uk
Canal & River Trust is a charitable company limited by guarantee registered in England & Wales with company number 7807276 and charity number 1146792. Registered office address First Floor North, Station House, 500 Elder Gate, Milton Keynes MK9 1BB.
This is an Environment Agency Consultation on which we should all be making our views heard, whether as Rivers Trust members, Anglers, Ecologists, Walkers, Cyclists or any other river (or riverbank) user.
Rather than expressing my views hers I’ll just copy and paste from today Monday’s email 2013-01-21
Consultation on river flow and water abstraction standards for hydropower will
be available for you to view and comment between the following dates:Start date: 21/01/13 09:00
End date: 02/04/13 23:59
Please select the following link to view this event:
https://consult.environment-agency.gov.uk/portal/ho/br/standards/hydro
If the link appears to be broken, please try copying the entire link into the
address bar on your web browser.This e-mail has been automatically generated by the Consultation software.
There was also a block about confidentiality of the email, but since anyone can sign up for the consultations alert, anyone can see that block for themselves if they sign up.
You can sign up yourself to be alerted of EA Consultations at http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/research/library/consultations/consultations.aspx
Earlier newsletters (available for download or viewing in your Web Browser) full list visible when logged in
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Saltaire Methodist Church,
Saltaire Road,
Shipley,
West Yorkshire
BD18 3HJ
The project is to hold its scheduled ‘agreement’ event on Wednesday 21st November at the Saltaire Methodist Church over two sessions. The event will examine issues that have become evident through the numerous consultations and events we have held over the year about the beck and its management into the future. Both of these sessions will look at the picture of the beck that has been gathered thus far through water quality and ecological assessments, the 6 visions for the beck, as well as a summary of potential future projects to take the project forward. All are welcome!
The first session from 3:00 pm – 5:30 pm is for the institutional stakeholders and associated professionals and the second from 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm is for the wider public. The reasons we are doing these across two sessions is to cater for the numbers of attendees, and that the focus of each session is slightly different. The Church is 8-10 minutes walk from Saltaire Train Station and there is a carpark nearby on the corner of Caroline Street and Victoria Road.
If you would like to book a place please email me, and feel free to distribute this further to colleagues and/or friends who might be interested in attending.
With kind regards,
Michael Canning (M.Sc, IEEM, SER)
Ecologist
Bradford Beck Project Officer
Aire Rivers Trust
michael.canning@aireriverstrust.org
http://bradfordbeck.blogspot.co.uk/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Friends-of-Bradford-Beck/
Aire Rivers Trust, a company limited by guarantee, company number 07464227.
Registered as a charity – registration number 1145609.
Dear readers,
From: Nigel Taylor
Message: Dear Sir/Madam,
I am a new PhD student at the University of Leeds, investigating the
impacts of and interactions between invasive species. I am focusing on the
signal crayfish and Chinese mitten crab.It seems as if the River Aire could provide some interesting field sites
where these two invaders may meet, with crayfish moving downstream and
mitten crabs moving up. Unfortunately, published data on the invaders’
distributions is scant.I was wondering if you could provide any information on these two species
in the Aire. Any anecdotal sightings (from informal surveys, residents near
the river, angling clubs etc.) would be very useful. If you have no
information at present, do you have a mailing list or way of circulating my
request so I can be informed if any river users see these species?Many thanks in advance for your assistance.
Regards,
Nigel Taylor————————————
Nigel Taylor
Postgraduate Research Student
Manton Building 8.17
University of Leeds
Clarendon Way LS2 9JTE-mail: bsngt@leeds.ac.uk
Mobile: + 44 7837 454 076
Killer shrimp and the ruddy duck – how should they be managed? The Law Commission are asking in new consultation on wildlife law: http://goo.gl/s7bH7
Open date: 14 August 2012
Close date: 30 November 2012
Spotted via a twitter digest.
The Environment Agency has for a long time had a consultations system, some consultations relate to environmental permitting, many to other areas of the agency’s remit.
These consultations always run for a month or more, at the end of the period the Environment Agencywrites a report summarising the responses and how the EA proposes to respond to the consultation.
The consultations summary page is at this link, a list of open and most recent closed consultations can be found here (6 are currently open at the time of writing – 2012-06-22)
I’m highlighting this on the website rather than trustees email, since I feel the process should have wider publicity.
You can register a consultee account at register, most consultations require you to login to take part in the process.
Today a fairly important consultation for Rivers Trusts and others interested in riverine issues started, its a 6 month consultation.
Attachments: 2 external links (there are 9 more but only 2 are relevant to our catchment) (1 national document and 10 basin catchments)
Site last updated June 15, 2013 @ 10:09 pm,
All rights reserved, All content © 2011-2013 Aire Rivers Trust, a company limited by guarantee company no ® 07464227 registered as a charity - Reg.No. ® 1145609