Output is about 12% down owing to stones still blocking inlet and outlet screens at the lower levels and the plan agreed with insurers, is to run in this manner until the usual low river levels June/July, when we shall drain to remove the remaining stone, alongside undertaking routine maintenance.

The interim period will be used for restoration of walkways and safety handrails in the fish pass area, re-installing fish counting equipment, under water cameras and elver pass.

Overall, we are pleased with the way that the turbine building and retaining walls stood up to around 1,750 tons of water going by a second, and we will fine tune a few areas to cater for the next very high flow in 50? or 200? years.

We have had an excavator on site for the past two weeks, transferring tonnes of stone from the outfall, fish trap and the fish screen bay to the areas on land “excavated” by flood water. You can see a video of the digger extracting rocks here

As can be seen from the photograph, a significant area of low-lying land upstream has been washed away. It was mostly rounded glacial moraine typical of the area. It was rocks from here that were deposited in the Hydro by the flood.

Some of the stone that remains will have to be removed during summer maintenance, when river levels are lower for long periods and the inlet area is drained.

With the heavy work complete, we shall focus on tidying the site and repairing the walkways, safety handrails and monitoring/control equipment, working closely with the insurance loss adjustors.

It’s good to see that the basic hydro building and associated structures are not damaged and that the screen cleaners, which were very exposed, are working after re-cabling.

Divers have double checked to make sure the stones that passed the turbine inlet screens via an inspection plate that was ripped off, have all been removed. We now have to re-connect the generators, that have been away for oven drying, with new bearings to provide a 12 month warranty.

The door to the turbine house was not this high and the basement flooded, covering turbines and generators.

When the floods subsided, we pumped out the water using a portable generator and then volunteers cleared out a lot of mud. So the building, now with mains power back on, is looking fine.

Engineers from Hydrohrom, who supplied and installed the turbines in the first place, are on site and we are rotating the turbines with new oil in the bearings on Friday 11 December.  The generators will go off site to a UK agency to be dried and then returned with a 12 month warranty.

Our greatest problem is not actually the turbine house, it’s the tons of stones and boulders that were brought in by the river and filled the fish screen bay, the fish pass and the outfall. All of this will be removed by heavy machinery and used to fill the holes created by the flood in the ground around the hydro building. We estimate it will be an eight week job, given we have Christmas and New Year approaching.

At least we are insured for repairs and lost revenue, with a relatively small excess to pay.

We do hope that those of you who live locally did not suffer too much in the floods, as some homes in Halton village were badly flooded.

We will keep you posted on developments.

The “wiper blades” that pull general debris into a flowing stream (launder channel) above may also be seen “parked” in the up position.

There are always a variety of other maintenance tasks to undertake so if you’re local then why not join one of our regular working parties on a Saturday morning. Please phone or email if you’re interested.

We amended our rules so that the quorum is now 5% of members and agreed that the accounts could be examined rather than audited. We then adopted the examined accounts, re elected our Directors and asked lots of questions. The full minutes will be added here as soon as they are ready.