Cheesebottom Fish Pass

Yorkshire Water is investing £4.2m in its Cheese Bottom wastewater treatment works in Thurgoland, Barnsley, to improve water quality in the river Don. What makes this site of interest, is that it includes the construction of a fish pass, created to help fish ‘climb’ past locks and weirs.

 The project will both improve the water quality of over 7.4km of the watercourse downstream of the works and address the migration of fish to their spawning grounds further upstream. The adjacent weir, originally constructed to service the nearby mill, has created a man-made obstruction preventing fish returning to their traditional habitats for breeding.

This dual approach to making cleaner water, together with the construction of this fish pass on a migration route, is addressing the local fall in freshwater fish numbers, creating more suitable conditions for fish populations to thrive. It is only relatively recently that the extent to which coarse (freshwater) fish need to move upstream and downstream has been recognised, and many fish passes are now designed to take them into account.

Projects of this nature require ‘collaborative engineering’ – as work of this type is expensive and is typically accomplished by multiple organisations and experts working in partnership, bringing together different experiences, knowledge and specialist skills.

KITE Projects role in this £4.2m scheme was to:

• Contribute to providing an adaptive approach to meeting challenges from water pollution

• Create safe access for site operatives to observe and maintain the fish pass and causeway

• Support Yorkshire Water’s commitment to the Water Industry National Environment Programme (WINEP)

• Following site surveys and design input, liaise with construction consultants to engineer and install a sustainable and resilient environmentally compliant solution