Shares in Abingdon Hydro went on sale this morning at the Guildhall in Abingdon. The share offer is open until 20th December.

This community project, with plans to generate electricity from the Thames in Abingdon, has had a long journey to get this far… getting planning permission, and approval from the Environment Agency, and answering questions from anglers. 10% of the projects costs are to fund a new fish pass.

They now hope to raise £1.25m from people in the local community to finance the project. There is a risk with the investment, but against the risk is a government tax offer. The earliest investors in this renewable energy project got a 50% tax relief on their investment, and others get 30% tax relief.

Along the River Thames different groups, some private, some community financed, are putting in Archimedes screws near locks to generate electricity. Thanks to the hard work of Richard Riggs and others the Abingdon Hydro will be largely community financed .

The current flow of the River Thames at Abingdon Weir would be what is needed to keep generating at near full power.

Find out more at Abingdon Hydro.

There has been a pile of sandbags outside the Abingdon Water Treatment Works for some time. The bags were used in the winter floods. There is no report of there being anything like the dangers of flooding at Abingdon’s water treatment works as experienced elsewhere – and reported in the Not Abingdon Blog.

The Abingdon Water Treatment works had a recent upgrade in 2012 at a cost of £3m.

The Borough Records show that the Thames Conservancy started writing to Abingdon Corporation back in about 1867 requesting them to initiate measures to stop the flow of sewage into the River Thames at Abingdon Bridge and St Helen’s Church. They wrote again in 1869 asking what action was being taken. By 1873 the conservatory were threatening Abingdon with legal action to force compliance.

The Town Clerk, wrote back to explain that a Committee had been looking at the issue, and had visited various sewage treatment schemes nationally.

But in 1875 Abingdon Corporation decided to do take action sooner rather than later. The Corporation borrowed about £19K from the Public Works Loan Commission, purchased land from a farmer in Sutton Wick, and created the Sewage Farm, that has through numerous upgrades become the concrete clad chambers and towers that are there today. I guess that a Sewage Farm involved allowing sewage to settle over larger areas of land.

The EA catchment map for the River Ock shows how it is enlarged through the influence of a dozen or so brooks including: Sandford Brook, Frilford and Marcham Brook, and Childrey Brook. Those brooks have winded their meandering way through villages and agricultural fields, under bridges and over weirs until flowing between the houses at Abingdon and into the River Thames .

The Introductory Steering Group  Meeting of the River Ock Catchment Partnership was held recently comprising members of local nature, wildlife, flood societies and the Environment Agency and chaired by the Freshwater Habitats Trust.

SAFAG (South Abingdon Flood Action Group), with Malcolm Moor, as chair were invited to share their ideas for introducing flood control measures through selective planting and creating retention ponds to hold back floodwater throughout the catchment.

Grants are available to landowners from the Forestry Commission for creating woodland which meets certain criteria, including the recently added objective of reducing downstream flood risk.

A skip, parked in West St Helen Street, is causing quite a few people to stop look and even take some of the contents. Our son keeps bringing things home. We have a wooden tray, a Christmas wreath, a game, and a garden flower container which I took back. It is going to take them much longer to fill up the skip at this rate as our house gets more and more cluttered.

The pavement near the skip was cordoned off by the police today, not to stop people stealing from the skip, but because a length of guttering, loosened by wind and rain, has been dangling loose and in danger of falling on a car or person beneath.