Urban Rivers
May 25, 2010
The Ribble has a surprisingly large amount of urban landscape, when you consider much of what it is known for is it’s fells, hills, and idyllic countryside landscape. For example, there’s: Settle, Barnoldswick, Clitheroe, Whalley, Padiham, Burnley, Nelson, Colne, Long Ridge, and Barrowford. Not to mention those outside the area we currently works like: Preston, Blackburn, Bolton, and Wigan. Plus the plethora of medium sized villages. All of these provide interesting issues when considering improving our rivers, we have Barriers, pollution and habitat degradation. And tackling some of these issues can bring interesting conflicts, such as weir removal, improving habitat impacting on visual appeal, and how do you source a cross connection in a major town?
Well some of these issues are currently taking up much of my “thinking time”. As well as tackling our on going projects we must keep an eye to the future and what we plan to tackle next as some require years of planning. The first step in that really got under way last week, with Charlie Poate starting to map out barriers to migration, habitat available above, what is need to make them passable, and most importantly cost. This will take him the best part of three months, and that’s just getting the basics in place. Monday he got underway with the desktop study, while Stephen and I met with Mark Rudd and Grant Talbot from the EA to get our legal agreements in place for our up coming partnership projects. After that Philip was in and we had our usual meeting. In the afternoon I had to prepare a presentation for Philip to give at the Association of Rivers Trusts seminar in Ballindary later in the week. After that was done I worked on a presentation for the Ribble Valley Strategic Partnership Environmental Theme Group (what a mouthful!). The presentation was to give an over view of what we do as an organisation and to look at how we can work together.
Tuesday was the meeting of the Strategic partnership which finished at lunch time. It was an interesting meeting with several of the conflicts mentioned above being discussed, not least Hydro electricity proposals, and the implications on the ecology of rivers. In the afternoon Charlie and I went up to Swanside to look at flow measuring over weirs. It was a nice afternoon and although every pool was stuffed with Smolts I was particularly disheartened by the lack of flow trapping smolts in the pools where they are over exposed to predators, but hopefully we will get some rain soon to get them out to sea where they belong.
Wednesday I popped into the office in the morning, but then had a meeting with a bank manager until lunch time. In the afternoon I tried to finish writing up the contracts for tendering of the Barrowford 3 project. In the evening was the AGM of the Calder Group. This was an interesting meeting and we managed to get off agenda so much I think the Chair was pulling his hair out! The main topic was Padiham weir and what had been carried out.
Thursday Mike Horner, one of our trustees, came in to go through our invertebrate monitoring data which he is now going to collate and analyse for us as our scheme is ever increasing, with two more training days fully booked and hopefully one more (if we get the funding) to come. In the afternoon Charlie and I did a walk over survey of the urban areas of the River Brun and Calder. I was amazed by the number of trout present and the size of them! Although I am told that their presence has long been known about by local residents, it was a real eye opener for me!
Although some might not like Graffiti, the trout don’t seem to mind!
Friday I had a few chores in the office to get on with, but in the afternoon, another walkover survey of sections of Laneshaw, Colne, and Trawden. Soon I will be able to find weirs without even looking! It was a long week, and numerous problems found on various rivers, but rather than see the glass half empty I’m trying to look at it half full. If there are a lot of fish present now, what will it be like if we can carry out some habitat improvement works.
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