A BUSINESSWOMAN who spent £150,000 during an eight-year conflict with the Environment Agency over water abstraction levels at her Tavistock fishery fears her business may go under. Despite complying with all the EA?s demands, including a £10,000 environmental impact assessment, owner of Tavistock Trout Fishery Abigail Underhill has been told she cannot abstract the same levels of water from the River Tavy which the business has been doing for the past 27 years. Miss Underhill said a device for measuring water was installed by the environment agency eight years ago which gave a higher reading from the abstraction levels on the ?Licence of Right? issued to her late father David several years earlier ? at that time it was an estimate as there was no means of measurement. ?The licence was obviously set wrong but the agency would not change it,? she said. ?We use the same amount of water because it fills the same pond my father dug in 1979 which feeds the lakes and then the water goes back into the river. We need this amount of water to keep the business going.? After a court case brought by the EA two years ago in which she was advised to plead guilty, Miss Underhill was told she had to apply for a variation of her licence. ?I did everything the agency asked me to do ? they told me to put in a device to stop baby salmon coming into the fishery which cost me £27,000, an electronic flow measuring device at £4,000 and an environmental impact assessment,? she said. The assessment carried out by Hyder Consultancy concluded that ?the authorisation of the current abstraction regime would be acceptable and would not have any significant environmental effects.? Miss Underhill, a single mother, said she had been feeling very positive after the report: ?I could not believe it last week when I got the letter from the EA saying they had refused to grant the variation of my licence. I was devastated since they seemed to totally ignore the survey which they asked me to have done at the cost of £10,000. ?It has been concluded that this business is doing no harm to the river or the fish yet the EA has turned us down. I have had eight years of worry and spent £150,000, mostly on legal fees.? She said her father would be devastated to see the fishery he built up ruined and she would be appealing against the EA?s decision. She is asking people to sign a petition and send letters of support. As well as supporting Miss Underhill and her three-year-old son, the business also provides full and part-time employment for three people. There are five fishing lakes on site which attract people from all over the country and four self catering units. Tavistock Trout Fishery holds the British record for the biggest cultivated rainbow trout. The EA has given Miss Underhill two options - to modify her practice or submit a revised application with supporting reports. The reasons the agency has given for refusal are: the environmental impact assessment provided has not met the test of showing no significant effect as required by English Nature under the habitats regulations; it is not EA policy to issue a licence that authorises the drying of a river (Miss Underhill flatly denies she has ever done this) and the applicant has not demonstrated reasonable need or shown how current abstraction practice represents an efficient use of water.
