A quick mention for the excellent Bow Back Rivers pages on the londoncanals.co.uk website.

Compiled in the period just before the Olympic onslaught hit the area, it's the definitive tour round all the waterways with their cocktail of history, industry and rampant wildlife which makes me realise how many places I never got to before it all disappeared.

On the Newsgroup Charlie points out it's last chance to object to the Planning Application (application ref 10/90250/FULODA ) for the 'Snorbit'

©William Heron

The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) has scrapped plans for a wind turbine on the Olympic Park site.

The turbine had been proposed for Eton Manor in the north of the site as part of the ODA’s target to deliver 20% of the Olympic Park’s legacy energy requirements from renewable sources from 2014 onwards when the site is fully operational.

Updated Background Papers are now available at http://www.gamesmonitor.org.uk/media_centre

Background Paper 1 - Impact (PDF) 170.23 KB

The East Marsh site, to be used as a temporary coach park during Games, also contains two feasible locations for a further turbine (only one turbine is possible due to limitations on turbine proximity with respect to other turbines), subject to flood risk assessment. Figure 2 shows a constraints diagram for this area produced by Ecotricity. BH/EDAW have identified two specific locations within this area which are suitable for wind turbines

London's Olympic Park Energy Centre, flagship of its sustainability claims, is being built by a company described as "one of the worst and most violent companies in Brazil in terms of its social and environmental record". It will form part of a profitable portfolio of energy projects including massive dams in the Amazon rainforest that are being widely condemned for their ecological damage and social injustice.

Chemical discharge into the Old River Lea: July 2009, ©: Martin Slavin
On 25th of February 2010 the Hackney Gazette reported; “More than 500 people in the north-east of [London], ...including many from Hackney, [have complained]..that their water smells of faecal matter.” A week earlier it reported that one resident said, “The water smells like faecal material. If you taste it you want to spit it out.” Another complained of the water having, “an incredibly strong, acrid chemical, sour milk or sewage smell"..