leaky dams/ NFM

[ThurgarlandA]

Hi. I am looking at putting leaky dams in a lowland stream running through arable land. High flows are rare but have occurred and been damaging downstream. The land is in HLS so has nice wide field margins. The landowner is however not keen because of potential damage to crops – so – I need to be able to demonstrate previous similar projects which have not damaged crops – can anyone provide me with evidence? Also, I was thinking of adding something which is a cross between a leaky dam and a check dam as I think any action is better than nothing and I’m trying to reach a compromise – so the dam would be raised above base flow but not come to the height of the bank and have a central low point to direct flow, basically just a board to slow flow – I cant find any examples of where this may have been done – opinions please.

Thanks

[Caitlin Pearson]

Hi,
I had a similar situation where there was an opportunity to install leaky dams but the landowner couldn’t have the water spilling onto the surrounding farmland. The watercourse/ditch was quite deep so we just made dams (a series of 5) which are below the top of the bank, but they work really well. There’s a few photos here http://www.westcumbriariverstrust.org/projects/dovenby-project but I’ve got lots more photos of them in storms showing the difference in water level upstream and downstream of the dam without any damage to the farmland. Let me know if more photos would be helpful and I can send some to you. caitlin”at”westcumbriariverstrust.org

[fiona]

hi, the RRC has been developing some fixed point monitoring apps this summer so try https://www.therrc.co.uk/blog-posts/fixed-point-photography or chat with Alex or Josh.
Their Guidance section covers monitoring for many NFM and river restoration applications if you had not come across that, https://www.therrc.co.uk/monitoring-guidance
cheers
Fiona

[Author]

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