Diggers
Back at Fleet Pond
DIGGERS
were craned into Fleet Pond on Saturday ready to begin the second phase of
dredging in the Fleet Pond restoration project. They
are now manoeuvring around the pond on pontoons –continuing to make it deeper
and creating new islands using the resulting silt. By the end of this year a
good dent should have been made into the estimated quarter of a million tonnes
of silt that needs to be moved.
Last
Spring the diggers removed silt and formed central islands thus creating a
windbreak and reducing wave action across the lake. This stirs up the silt and makes
the water murky so that plants cannot grow on the lake bed. The
dredging stopped on April 1 to avoid disturbance to breeding birds. This
autumn the dredgers will deepen areas around the edge of the lake while further
islands will create calmer backwaters leading to areas of clear water in which
plants can grow.
More
dredging will be needed in future and Hart District Council is working hard to
secure funding to continue the restoration. The
project run by the council has raised funds through Natural England’s Higher
Level Stewardship grant of £173,000 and Water Framework Directive (£142,000). There
has also been Environment Agency WFD grants of £100,000 and a similar amount
from developers’ contributions.
Fleet
Pond Society, through its ‘Clearwater Campaign’, promotes community awareness
of the situation at the pond and raises voluntary funding towards projects not
contained in the main restoration project.
Cllr
Sara Kinnell, Hart’s Cabinet Member for Leisure and Environmental Promotion,
commented: “We’d like to thank everyone involved. This year is a giant step
towards reaching our goals.”
