Mackley, as part of an integrated delivery team on this Environment Agency project, has completed a sixth of seven weir refurbishments – as well as the installation a new fish pass – on the River Wey in Surrey.
This work, with an integrated team including Jackson Hyder/Arcadis, is part of a £9m order for the Wey Weirs Refurbishment and Fish Pass Project.
The project is being carried out by Mackley as part of Team Van Oord and on behalf of the Environment Agency, the National Trust and other local stakeholders.
It is designed to reduce the risk of flooding and improve fish and eel migration along a 27km stretch of the River Wey in Surrey. Alongside the EA’s Wey FWD Project, the work will open up around 100km of passage to the River Thames for the first time in centuries.
The project consists of replacement, refurbishment and repair works to seven weir sites, which replicated the historic designs, alongside installing five fish/eel passes at priority sites to bypass the weirs.
The weirs, which the Environment Agency own, control water levels for the purposes of navigation and flood conveyance and are in urgent need of repair or reconstruction to prevent operational or structural failure.
Meanwhile, the new fish and eel passes will form a chain that will allow fish and eels to migrate from the River Thames to new feeding and breeding areas – which, in turn, will improve populations of coarse fish species, eel, salmon and sea trout in the River Wey.
The seven sites covered by the project are:
- Hamm Oils Mill Weir and bypass channel fish passes, Weybridge
- Walsham Weir and naturalised fish pass, Ripley
- Newark Weir and eel pass and Abbey fish passes, Woking
- Broadmead Weir and eel pass, Woking
- Bowers Mill Weir, Guildford
- Stoke Mill Weir, Guildford
- Millmead Weir and naturalised fish pass, Guildford
This year, Mackley has successfully replaced the Broadmead Weir and installed an eel pass – as well as retrofitting a fish/eel pass to the Abbey Weir at Newark. The works were handed over on 30 October.
The first two weirs, at Hamm Oils Mill and Walsham Weir, were successfully completed and handed over in 2018. Bowers Weir and Newark Weir and eel pass followed in 2019.
Mackley is currently undertaking a new fish pass at Walsham, where previously it undertook the weir works last year. This work will be finished alongside Hamm Oils fish pass and Millmead Weir construction in 2021.
Mackley has completed the downstream works and installed the Culverts upstream to allow the tow path to be re-opened for the winter period. These works are now closed for the winter period and will continue in April next year.
23 November 2020
