"Saltaire is a Victorian model village located in Shipley, part of the City of Bradford Metropolitan District, in West Yorkshire, England. The Victorian era Salt's Mill and associated residential district located by the River Aire and Leeds and Liverpool Canal is a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site...
...Saltaire was built in 1851 by Sir Titus Salt, a leading industrialist in the Yorkshire woollen industry. The name of the village is a combination of the founder's surname and the name of the river. Salt moved his business (five separate mills) from Bradford to this site near Shipley to arrange his workers and to site his large textile mill by the Leeds and Liverpool Canal and the railway. Salt employed the local architects Henry Lockwood and Richard Mawson..."
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It is a long time since the weir has been used to provide power, but Bradford City Council have recently proposed a scheme for a modern hydro electricity generating project. However this has raised a number of objections as this newspaper article states.
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BRADFORD Council's controversial plans for a hydro-turbine on the River Aire are under attack from two groups.
The whole scheme could be in doubt if Saltaire Angling Association's (Saltaire AA ) claim to have legal control over any riverside activity proves successful.
The society, which has 400 members, is taking legal action against the Council to prevent any disruption of the existing weir and watercourse.
Meanwhile, the feared impact on masses of migrating minnows has prompted the Aire Rivers Trust to also lodge a strong objection with the local authority.
Richard East of Saltaire AA said it has already started legal action against the Council over the plans for an electricity-generating giant Archimedes Screw.
"We had hoped that the Council would have seen sense and not try to force this through," his objection said.
"Saltaire AA have owned the fishing/sporting rights since 1867, around 100 years prior to Bradford Council being granted guardianship of the surrounding land within Roberts Park - which does not include the river bed."
Mr East stressed that included the weir itself, which is due to be narrowed by the proposed hydro-power plant.
"The Environment Agency have confirmed previously that all weirs must remain on the River Aire and that these must not be tampered with due to the amount of toxins held behind them, as, if released, these toxins would wipe out all life in the river," he said.
And he criticised the Council for wasting tax payers' cash by progressing on a scheme he called unviable.
"I shall now be advising our solicitors to make final preparations against this scheme," Mr East said.
The chairman of the Aire RiversTrust , Kevin Sunderland, is equally opposed to the scheme - but from the angle of fish welfare.
"The Ecological Assessment which has been lodged is inadequate as it does not consider the effect of the scheme on the hundreds of thousands of minnows which successfully ascend Saltaire Weir every year," he said on behalf of the Trust.
Mr Sunderland said he had seen the Aire "black with migrating minnows."
"Minnows probably comprise well over 95 per cent of the fish in the river at Saltaire and play a key part in the ecology of the river," he said.
Mr Sunderland explained that if the weir was narrowed, water flow would increase, making it impossible for the tiny minnows to progress up and over at their current massive rate of 10,000 a day.
"Mass migration of minnows over Saltaire Weir takes place every summer and the fish have been counted successfully ascending the weir at a rate of 350 per hour, day after day," Mr Sunderland said."
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