Shrewsbury Hydro
Shrewsbury Hydro – 6th February 2012
Transition Town Shrewsbury are pleased to announce that their application to LEAF, the government’s Local Energy Assessment Fund, has been successful and they have been awarded £42,725 for Shrewsbury Hydro to finalize its plans for a possible hydro scheme alongside the Castlefields Weir in Shrewsbury.
The funding will allow detailed designs and drawings of all aspects of the scheme to be prepared and these will be incorporated into scale models of the site which will then be put on show for public consultation and comment around the end of March. There will be an exhibition in the town centre and in Castlefields and Underdale.
The LEAF Fund is a £10 million fund set up as a competition in December by DECC, the Department of Energy and Climate Change and it “aims to support communities across England and Wales to play an active role in the development of a low carbon society where energy supply is both secure and affordable.” Altogether, 237 community projects will receive funding under LEAF.
The work now being funded by LEAF will build on the work already underway with the £15,000 which Shrewsbury Hydro recently won in the national River Cottage/British Gas Energyshare competition when it was one of the 4 winners out of 646 groups who entered. This money is currently being spent on environmental surveys on the land alongside the weir, including a flood risk survey, a fish pass survey and a protected species survey.
