The main works carried out in the river were the introduction of:

- 6 riffle areas, two of which were combined with a cattle crossing/drinking of total length about 64 metres

- two lengths of river narrowing, lengths 10 metres and 13 metres

- the creation of 3 mid-stream islands

- 9 lengths of tree trunk as large woody debris (LWD) at a spread of points.

Work proceeded from downstream to upstream to take account of any water level changes and interactions between the various measures.

 

The placing of the stone and gravel in the river to form the riffles, and the setting of the LWD, were the most intensive parts of the works. These required the use of a tracked digger and a 3.5t dumper truck, with our consultant Vaughan Lewis directing the operations and driving the dumper. This work was carried out on the 5th October, and on the 11th and 12th October; but with subsequent much hand labour to form the upper cattle crossing/riffle, and re-instate the cattle crossing across the side channel.

 

Vaughan was also with us on the 3rd and 4th October. The work carried out then was the bank narrowing and island creation work, working with hazel materials. This used no heavy machinery but was labour intensive.

 

Running parallel to the in-river work, the spoil was removed along the bank length of some 120 metres of the upper middle reach meadow. This was a separate exercise carried out by Environment Agency staff and machinery working with their tracked digger feeding two 2.5t tracked dumper trucks. Some 700-1,000 tonnes of spoil were taken off-site to an adjacent arable field. This took 7 working days to move in the period from the 6th to the 16th October.

SUMMARY OF WORK UNDERTAKEN