Had an enjoyable meeting today with a very knowledgeable volunteer looking at all this water. Specifically the mil pond. This has gone through various stages of development since the 18c and now about to go through another.
We find ourselves with a pond slowly silting up by the river depositing silt loads, especially in times of flood. The 1 in 100 year events seem to happen with ever increasing frequency nowadays leading to the pond becoming shallower and of less benefit to wildlife. It ceased to power the mill for full production a long time ago. The huge mill wheel is still turned by water power today but requires less of it than formerly. So we no longer have the need for a large storage area.
It was put forward to put in stop logs to effectively close off the inlet to the pond stopping inputs of silt from the river. There will still be issues with leaves in autumn but we will have to monitor this effect over time.
After this meeting we walked up to the reservoir by the car park, now frequented ducks, to look at similar issues here. This very square pond was dug to create a store of water above the mill to aid in fighting fires. A small bore pipe leads down to a hydrant in the mill yard where hoses would have been attached. Now all coroded and siezed. A discussion was had over installing a seperator to get rid of the hydrocarbons, entering into the pond. The car park surface water runs off into the pond. This keep it nicely topped up but we have to think how we deal with the nastys that run off with it!
The ducks were enjoying themselves at any rate.
Finished off the day showing round a new member of staff around and discussing how we can increase the corporate days we have at Styal and quality of visits. I think that'll be an ongoing task over the next few weeks. Has confirmation today of a company coming with 100 employees to carry out a task in October for us so looking forward to that one.
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