With the netting completed on Lac Lucie and the lake completely drained, Cesar Constructions were able to crack on with building the new drain and finishing the earth works. The banks have been built up and 50 tonnes of rock delivered and buried into the side of the dam wall. This will help prevent any erosion or damage from the coypu, which are not overly prevalent at our lakes but they are around.
Stuart has created some interest for the carp along the dam wall with some deeper pools along the edge and also used his digger to clear out the silt and dead leaves from the far end of the lake to create a bit of depth and remove the harmful nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen. This should improve the water quality.
There is not much to do on Lac Lucie now, just finishing off the overflow which needs to be concreted. It is already filled with rocks so this should hopefully be completed by the end of the week and then the lake can be inspected and hopefully signed off as compliant.
In the meantime more work has been happening on Kingfisher lake with all of the trees on the dam wall now having been removed and the overflow here cleared and some fallen stones put in place. The stumps of the trees have been left in place wherever possible and will be allowed to shoot out to a maximum height of 1m to create some small bushes. As we have said before we are not allowed to have trees on the dam wall due to the risk of the wall being breached and too much water being sent downstream.
In the meantime Nigel has been helping with some of the clearing and has started work on clearing the stream out which runs alongside Kingfisher. This was supposed to have been done before we took over, with all of the blockages removed as well as the pipes that drained into the lake. Stuart will complete the top end with his digger which is more challenging and Nigel will do the lower half. In order for the digger to get down the side some smaller trees have had to be removed but it will still be a nice tree lined path round the far side of the lake
Hopefully the next 2 weeks will start to see everything being completed, with more stone being delivered to strengthen Kingfisher dam wall and the stream being cleared. And hopefully we shall see Lac Lucie being signed off and we can start draining Kingfisher ready for netting. Nigel keeps promising to do a couple of nights fishing but the freezing weather last week and the work he has been doing on the lakes and Kingfisher chalet has not made this possible…maybe next week. He did, however, find a couple of cats and another small carp which had escaped into the draining point of Lac Lucie and these have been safely delivered to Kingfisher.
Until next time, bonne journée….