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river goyt archimeadian screw objection details

Here's a few lines from the New Mills prospectus
http://www.resonance.ltd.uk/f/torrs_hydro_new_mills_prospectus.pdf

I expect the Stockport to be basically the same

(THNM = Torrs Hydro New Mills)

Social Investment
Investing in THNM should be seen as a social and not a financial investment. THNM does not guarantee a safe haven for your money.

THNM is permitted to pay interest on your shares. The society will pay only a low rate of interest on money paid for its shares and may pay no interest at all.
Please note:
· By law we cannot offer a generous interest rate
· We are unlikely to pay more than a nominal interest to our shareholders for several years.
· You should not expect to receive any interest on your shares.

Shares in this industrial and provident society cannot be sold or traded and there is no prospect of them ever being worth more than their nominal value.
Subject to the 3 year holding period, you may be able to withdraw your shares on 180 days notice. If you withdraw your shares THNM will not repay more than you originally paid for your shares.

Publication date: 7 November 2007 Page 11 of 17 Torrs Hydro New Mills Ltd (THNM)
The value of your shares may fall. Although shares in this industrial and provident society are withdrawable, you may not be able to withdraw the full price you pay for them if the society does not have sufficient funds available at the time you want to withdraw your shares. In some circumstances, the directors may be compelled to write down the value of your shares. Should you then wish to withdraw your shares, you should expect to receive
only their written down value.

You may lose the value of your shares. As an industrial and provident society, THNM does not need to be authorised by the Financial Services Authority to take deposits by issuing these withdrawable shares. It is not regulated, to the extent that it is taking deposits by issuing withdrawable shares. Therefore, the money you pay for your shares is not safeguarded by any depositor protection scheme or dispute resolution scheme. THNM has
paid up capital and reserves of £4.

Our shares are not “investments” for the purposes of the Financial Services Act 1986.
Therefore, you do not have the level of protection that you might otherwise be offered by the Act. In particular, this document does not need approval (and has not been approved)
by an “approved person” under Section 57 of the Financial Services Act 1986.
This issue of shares is not regulated by the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 or subsidiary regulations.

This document is not regulated by the Prospectus Regulations 2005. Those regulations do not apply because there is a specific exemption for industrial and provident societies that conduct their business for the benefit of the community.

Should THNM get into financial difficulties:
· We may have to suspend your rights to withdraw your shares
· We may have to write down the value of your shares
· You may lose all the money you pay for your shares

Publication date: 7 November 2007 Page 12 of 17 Torrs Hydro New Mills Ltd (THNM)
You should buy shares only with money you can afford to have tied up,
without interest, and without capital appreciation, for several years or longer.
You should buy shares only with money that you are prepared to lose.
Can you afford to be without the money you pay for these shares?
If not, do not buy the shares.

If you are in any doubt about the information contained in this document, you should consult an Independent Financial Adviser authorised under the Financial Services Act 1986, or you should seek advice from a solicitor or accountant.

The documents that are available for your inspection are as follows:
· The Rules of Torrs Hydro New Mills Limited
You may inspect these, during normal business hours at the registered office with prior
arrangement.
 
Ive spoken to the local stockport paper, they said that if we can come up with 4-5 strong solid arguing points they will print our storey.

1/ Waste of money, better green investment opportunities, ones that will make you money.

2/ Why is a local councillor a director of the Stockport Hydro Ltd when he's wife sits on the town planning comity and is in a possion to lobby other members.

3/ Rare local wildlife will be directly effected and displaced in the development area.

4/ The goyt is a recovering salmon river and the Archimedes screw will directly affect the natural navigation instincts of this beautiful fish along with other species like, barbel, chub and eels by drawing them towards the rotating outlet blades that it can not pass and the weir pool will silt up.

5/ It can only power up to 18 kettels when its at its full generating capacity not 70 homes.
 
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Glenn, if they haven't already, you could suggest they would be better off putting out street lights in rural and semi sub-urban areas between 01.00 and 05.00 as they do in many areas down here now, they will save massive money for the council and reduce power consumption to a much higher level that 10 screws could generate..........
 
Wild Trout Trust Article

This years edition of the Wild Trout Trust's journal Salmo Trutta carries and article by Dr Alan Butterworth "Wild Trout and Hydropower". It may be worth a read if you havn't already. The WTT web site is here
 
This years edition of the Wild Trout Trust's journal Salmo Trutta carries and article by Dr Alan Butterworth "Wild Trout and Hydropower". It may be worth a read if you havn't already. The WTT web site is here

Thanks for that, Mr Butterworth has some very strong data that we will be hoping to get in to the paper

Hoping to meet local reporter from the Stockport times at the Midway Tavern on newbridge lane, Stockport SK1 2NX around 130pm this Thursday.

Please come along if you can make it.
 
Good news, we have been speaking to the Stockport times and we put our points across.

We shall be in next weeks paper all being well.

This should bring an other local paper onboard from Wensleydale in North Yorkshire where h2ope are wanting to install a hydro system.

P.S. The EA refused to comment of the effects of installing small hydro systems on small inland weir pools.

What does that tell you?
 
How about getting the title of the thread changed, as h2ope is just one company that are looking at developing hydro across the UK.
 
2/ Why is a local councillor a director of the Stockport Hydro Ltd when he's wife sits on the town planning comity and is in a possion to lobby other members.

Glenn,
it may sound a bit naive of me but surely the council have an ethics and code of conduct policy? These individuals should be excluded from the planning committee as there is a direct conflict of interest. The company I work for have extremely strict rules regarding these types of situations though I'm sure the tin gods who act as councillors think they can operate outside the rules of us mere mortals. Having dealt with my local planning committee on a proposed communtiy project that they fought against tooth and nail I feel for you. Illegitimi Non Carborundum.
 
I called the town hall and the local Lib Deb office and of course everything has been done by the book.
 
Decision Time

Decision Time

6pm 24th May
Highgate centre
Bents Av
Bredbury
SK6 2LF

Google Maps

Some pointers for the meeting:
If your going to object to the planning, you need your objections in writing to hand it in at the start of the meeting.

If you find that they are a few people that want to object you'll have to act quickly and choose somebody to speak on behalf of all objecters.

Only one person can stand and say their peace and they only have 3 minutes to say it.

Stockport Hydro will also have only 3 minuets to say why planning should be granted.

Its an open meeting and anybody can go.
 
A fantastic job

I would just like to make a point of saying a public thankyou to jaysz who did a fantastic job at the planning meeting tonight, he came up with some fantastic points across the board and put his/our argument across perfectly, straight to the point with facts and figures to back it up, A BIG WELL DONE MATE
to be honest in my opinion the meeting was a bit of a farce, jane chase said she had only recieved 2 letters of objection when there,s 14 or so on the website, the fed secetary had a file thick with facts and couldnt get his point across properly, i,m sure he didnt realise you only had 3mins, 1 of the councillors dissapeared, 1 was for the proposed constructions and 1 just went on about japanese knotweed, and when jaysz bought up about easy access and loss of fishing for those less able a councillor backed him up for the planning woman to say that ease of access for the less able shouldnt be a fact in whether planning gets granted or not, although she did make a note of it.
Jaysz i,m just glad your wife let you out tonight, without you we would have been ****ed.
steve welsh was only up there for a min or so stating the weir comes first, fish come second, and the screw comes third in orders of priority, said at current cost would generate £1000000 profit for the community
he did stress that ben alexander was a volintary director and would make no money from the constructions after somebody wrote in about his relationship to somebody on the planning commitee wonder who that was glenn :D
probably took about 20min if that to do to do both sites and thats with questions to the opposition, well all one of them.
cheers
jerry
 
Thanks for that Jerry. But however well I did the job, I do feel that the councillors were not really interested in any objections. They did not seem to understand the economic reality of the scheme, which is that H2ope are using investors money to provide them with some construction work. They repeatedly state that there is unlikely to be any profit for investors and equally, little chance of them getting their money back. The real payer is the wildlife which loses out wholesale.
The 1 million pounds "profit" is over the 40 years of the project. £25,000 per year, which on an investment of £1,300,000 is a return of about 2%. And that tiny profit is entirely dependent upon the subsidy from the British taxpayer. If the objective is to benefit the community, investing that money in a fixed rate bond would give about 5% return: far, far better. Nope: this scheme is all about work for the H2ope company, regardless of the environmental cost. And rumours are that the screw will be built in a German factory. So not even jobs for British workers.
I have, now, a low opinion of local council meetings. This one seemed to have one bloke who actually was doing all the decision making. One or two others who wittered on about mainly irrelevant stuff, and one little old lady who, to be honest, did nothing except say that a chimney was noisy 30 years ago. The knotweed lady could have been useful, if she had aimed her points away from the vegetation.
 
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The latest email from the over-riding consultative body, seems to want to streamline the application process - whatever that entails!
We want you to have the best possible opportunity to contribute ideas on how to streamline permitting of hydropower projects while protecting and improving the environment. Therefore, we have decided to extend the consultation so we can use a CIWEM conference on hydropower in the London on 23 June as part of the consultation process. The consultation will now close on Friday 2 July 2010.

The consultation can be found at:

English https://consult.environment-agency.gov.uk/portal/ho/br/hydro/power

Welsh https://consult-cy.environment-agency.gov.uk/portal/ho/br/hydro/power

However, if you would prefer to send your response by post, please send it to:

Hydropower Permitting Consultation
Better Regulation Team
Environment Agency
Block 1
Government Buildings
Burghill Road, Westbury on Trym
Bristol BS10 6BF

Or email Hydropower_permitting@environment-agency.gov.uk

To request a hard copy, please email us at the same address.

More information on Hydropower can be found at:

http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/business/topics/water/32022.aspx
 
The closing date for the Hydro Scheme has come and gone and it has been an exciting few days as the total accelerated to just short of £100,000 from 103 investors. It has been a remarkable experience as a potential “family†has been created, from not only Stockport but from all over the UK and two from France, to nurture this project to produce clean energy. The response has surpassed virtually all if not all other Community schemes.

Unfortunately the news is not all good due to other developments over recent weeks and that now leaves us with options and opportunities, which we will explain. All things being equal, we think that the money raised would have enabled us to go ahead with the Otterspool Scheme, albeit borrowing more from the very supportive bank. But like the salmon, we have a number of weirs to leap.

Firstly we have now successfully negotiated Planning Consent. We now have full planning permission for both schemes, granted on 10th June by Stockport’s full Planning.

Secondly, at Otterspool, during the detailed work of negotiating the lease agreement, we discovered that a small part of the land that the Council (our prospective landlord) thought it owned is indeterminate. This needed the formality of a Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) which the Council was making. However, the CPO has been delayed by an unexpected objection concerning access to the riverbank by the Stockport and District Angler’s Federation. We had previously thought we had agreed sufficient provision with the fishermen but this unexpected objection means that further discussions have to take place to agree the nature of the CPO. These discussions and the resulting CPO process will take time.

In addition, the recent General Election process has been somewhat of a hindrance in that we had to cancel the official launch at the Town Hall which was planned well before the Election was called. We eventually held a well attended open-evening on the 19th May. However, just before election day we heard that the North West Development Agency (NWDA) were unable to give clarity about an apparent change in policy. Some time back we had made our submission to the NWDA for a grant of £100,000 and supplied our business plan based on obtaining a government Feed-In-Tariff (FiT) for the green electricity. Out of the blue we were getting messages from the NWDA saying that the then government might be implying that any scheme can have either the grant or the tariff, but not both as we have assumed in our financial modelling. With the change of government Ben spoke to his MP face-to-face who then wrote directly to the Minister responsible. We await clarification but we guess that this may become a detail in the Emergency Budget on 22 June

The reality of these two issues is that we have missed this year’s window of opportunity for construction as this has, broadly speaking, to take place at the end of summer and before winter.

We have asked ourselves the question whether we should simply give up (that’s easy!) or use our determination to achieve our goals next year?

*

To do so we would need know that you would be happy to continue with your financial support. Your support would be a very solid base from which to raise more money, even if the Grant / FiT situation does not work in our favour, as we will by then have all of the regulatory permissions required (the Environment Agency permission is expected soon).

*

It would give time for the issues about the CPO and FiT to be resolved.

*

It would allow us to tender more widely for the Civil Engineering work, bringing down costs, as does the better rate we get for the Euro (we import the Archimedean screw and various other elements of the hydro system)
*

The money would be securely deposited in the bank and none would be spent unless and until the full scheme approval was back on track and all the required funds raised.
*

Your continued support would mean that the only barrier to construction next year is the raising of sufficient finance – something we believe we can overcome.

We consider every one of our investors as part of a family and at this point, before we make any decision, we would like “to ask the family†to hear what your thoughts and suggestions are.

To help us sift through your responses, could we ask you to indicate a simple 'yes' or 'no' to the question of whether you wish to maintain your financial support. If 'no', we will send you back your cheque. If 'yes' we will cash your cheque and hold it, as mentioned above, in a secure deposit account.

We firmly believe we can still achieve our aim of constructing two hydro sites and we need your support to help us do so.

If you have any questions, please write them also in your email response and we'll answer them as quickly as possible. Please send all your responses to...

Steve.welsh@h2ope.co.uk

07964 106037


Steve Welsh; Doug Everard; Ben Alexander
Founding Directors


Steve Welsh
Water Power Enterprises (h2oPE)
07964 106037
01706 813663
 
Thanks for that, Glenn....I will be emailing Mr Welsh. The delay's good new, however he seems overly keen to get the wheels back on the project.
 
Hmmmm.

I'm not savvy with construction and planning processes etc but the fact they have "full planning permission" for both sites doesn't sound very good.

Apart from that the rest of it seems to be political rubbish to appease any investors that might have been expecting immediate work etc.

I'm not well informed when it comes to the effect it has on fish either. Its not the course fish i'm worried about, its the Salmon and Sea Trout that have ran the river in the past few years.

Its a shame that nobody wanted nothing to do with the river when it used to run a different colour every day depending on the processes of the paper mills. Now its improved a few thousand %, we have these parties coming from the woodwork, but none of them were interested in cleaning it up, and investing where the real money was needed.

I hope it falls flat on its arse.

Well done to all those directly involved in the fight.
 
Other fact is that they needed 750K of public donations (investment) to get this project off the ground and it seems that they only raised 100k even with an extended deadline.

Thank god the people of Stockport have brains and can see that this project was a waste of time.
 
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