Dam Works at Highams Park Lake – Update from The City Corporation
Latest update as 18th November, 2014
Scout Hut Floodwall
The construction of the floodwall has progressed steadily. Some sections of wall are complete on top of the dam. The sections of wall down the bank will be partially completed through another concrete pour which will leave a small length of wall to be built around the footbridge. Once the wall is complete, the next step will be to clad it in brickwork.
Footbridge
The footbridge over the spillway has been completely demolished. This will be replaced with a slightly narrower footbridge. It had to be removed so as to give sufficient room for the construction of the floodwall around the Scout hut.
Drawdown structure
The drawdown structure will enable the water level in the lake to be lowered in an emergency situation and for maintenance purposes. The temporary steel sheet pile structures around the entry and exit points for the drawdown structure have been completed and excavation in these is almost finished. This will allow the construction of the reinforced concrete headwalls to begin shortly.
Desilting
Desilting works started in earnest on Monday 27th October. You may have noticed the ballet of sealed lorries coming to site to take the silt away. To date it is estimated that a total of approximately 2,000m3 of silt been removed. Although a smell has been noticeable around the lake at times owing to the desilting operations, we believe its impact has been minor and very local. The desilting process is now about halfway through and should be finished in December.
Lake oxygen levels
As part of the desilting works we are now oxygenating the water and monitoring the oxygen concentration throughout the lake. This far the effect has been positive, with no fish kills to report and the bird activity around the lake has been uninterrupted.
Sweeping the road
The Charter Road, up which all of the lorries carrying the silt away from the lake are travelling, is being intensively cleaned a minimum of once a week during the desilting process to reduce the spread of dirt and mud carried by the lorries from the site onto the road.