Temporary water supply to keep glen residents connected during clear-up

The team completed the work in 18 hours over the course of two days.

A 15-strong team from Foresty and Land Scotland (FLS) worked all day to install a pipeline that will temporarily divert the water supply to keep residents connected during harvesting operations to clean up damage from Storm Arwen.

The water supply had been interrupted or otherwise silted because of fallen trees and damaged banking.

Sean Miller, Stewardship Manager for FLS said: “The lade private water supply was damaged by Storm Arwen, principally by root plates lifting and removing the banking of the channel.

“In sections, it was also badly affected by single trees or groups of trees having been blown down across it.

“Threading the pipeline through the windblown trees was too dangerous so we had to take the pipeline away from the harvesting area and along the forest road, crossing it at two locations.

“This should mean that FLS has provided water security for the local residents for the duration of the harvesting operation.”

The operation, which was completed in 18 hours over two days, had been delayed as it could only begin after a white tailed sea eagle chick in a nearby nest had fledged.

As well as building a sandbag dam at the supply source, the team laid the pipe in sections along the almost 1.5km length and a 45m fall in elevation from the source to the settling tank. The sandbags, pipes and drums were transported as far as possible by FLS vehicles, before being relayed to the source site by quad. With the sandbag dam built and the intake positioned, the FLS team had to physically carry the pipe along the length of the route to unroll the pipe.

Once the diversion was in place, with the agreement of the private water supply users, the temporary system was commissioned. A monitoring programme was put in place, working with the residents and teething problems were gradually ironed out. While the system is robust, by its very nature it requires close monitoring.

The FLS team can now get on with clearing up the storm damage, which they hope to complete before January next year.