WATER gushing from old mine workings could be used for sustainable electricity generation – in an ironic twist of fate on the site of the former coal-powered Lydney Power Station.

Sustainable energy specialist and engineer Ian Daycock has been asked by the Environment Agency to explore the potential of the overspill at Norchard Drift, near the Dean Forest Railway Centre.

And his findings are that both the mine discharge and the old dam and silted-up mill pool at New Mills, both of which eventually discharge into the River Lyd, could each provide hydro-power – at a cost.

Mr Daycock's report states: "At both these sites an installation could be provided capable of producing in the region of 10 kilowatts.

"But capital costs are high and the power plant would need to be privately developed and the electricity generated used locally."

Another possibility is combining the two flows for a generating station at Norchard. Though the amount of electricity envisaged could supply some six or seven houses and perhaps the railway visitor centre, its beauty was that once a generator was installed the system would be renewable and virtually cost-free.

Norchard Drift is an abandoned drift coalmine which shut partly because of the cost of pumping water out of the workings.

The internal mine barriers have broken down and water discharges with some force through a culvert into the River Lyd – for long a source of water-power in the days before electricity.

In its heyday the Lydney power station supplied a huge area before it ceased operations in 1968 – while across the River Severn at Berkeley the new white hope, nuclear power, was just being born.