Halton Lune Hydro The biggest community hydro in England
We’re making good progress on site with flood recovery and we plan to open the footpath via the wooden steps quite soon and restart the turbines during the first week in February.
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.
