I wanted to come on last night and give an update to yesterdays meeting at the Barrage but i got tied up with a few other things. Anyway, firstly the meeting was well attend! I didn't count but i would think about 12 people. Which is massive improvement since the last time. The EA, Angling trust and CRT were all there, plus others.
The first thing that we looked at was the top sluice gate. Which is situated at the top of the fish pass. This was installed originally but has never been used. We raised this a while back now & the CRT staff have finally got it working with a hydraulic pack. It was good to see it in action and would certainly work during those big tides when the gates pull up and the fish pass shuts off (fish rule). CRT are looking to get this automated and built into the PLC. So we'll keep and eye on the progress with that.
The next thing was the adjustments to the nav lock gates, Fishtek suggested retrofittig sluice gates to them & are confident it would work well for fish passage. There was confusion on the automatic operation of it. Then CRT suggesting potentially leaving the work until the gates are replaced. This has been a hot topic as there has been several different thoughts on when they will be changed. A guy for CRT who is involved with gate work, confirmed they aren't due for replacement for another 15 years! Myself and the EA both reaffirmed that this is far too long!! The EA were also very forceful on this due to the fact that one of the stimulations of the Barrages provional fish pass license, is that the nav lock needs to be used for fish pass. Which we all know that it isn't currently!! It was good to see the EA react like this.
CRT are asking Fishtek to produce a design and cost fish pass for gate 1. They need to get the funds together for this first if I remember rightly.
Work is ongoing with creating securing mounts for the EAs Aris monitoring camera.
Seal surveys will continue & apparently the Seals that frequent the Barrage are all different and not the same offenders, take that as you want. I don't believe it myself.
The plan to do more work on the smolt monitoring too.
They are the main points, if I remember anything more i'll be sure to post.
