Lost Wee Weirs of the Forth

Project Overview

The Forth’s rivers reflect its varied history as landowners and entrepreneurs have shaped our land and rivers to meet the needs of agricultural improvement, drive industrial progress, transport our basic goods and glorify modern-engineering in the creation of designed landscapes. This has left countless legacies in the social and economic context of Scotland, but a significant environmental one is the hundreds of barriers in our rivers, inclusive of sluices, dams, weirs, and culverts. These barriers have interrupted the natural processes of our rivers (e.g. moving sediment across the landscape) and ceased the unimpeded movement of our iconic, native fish species.

The Lost Wee Weirs of the Forth Project 2022-2023 examines and tests the potential for complete removal of 3 very different weirs across 3 rivers in the Forth. Providing the basis for skilling up our team, learning through doing and making our rivers easier for our wildlife.

This project focuses on three small weirs, that would be potentially removable by the use of small scale construction works i.e. not needing to use a digger.  For each weir it was hoped that we could progress to licence to remove these, each started with located the weir owner and scoping the potential to remove.

This is an update as of March 2023 on the progress with the porject:

Old weir on the Linnhouse Water (part of the Almond, West Lothian)
This is now known as Morton Quarry Weir,  although its origins are still very much unknown. Connected to the construction of the inter-city rail line viaduct, part of the Oakbank oil shale and chemical works, or the quarry that is now local fish ponds.  The partial removal licence has been submitted to SEPA and is due to be reviewed and issued by early May 2023. In the meantime, we are still seeking the owner of their weir. 

A stepped weir on the Dollar Burn, (part of the Devon, Clackmannanshire)
A series of steps made of old rail tracks and concrete, which was renovated by a past local living landscapes partnerships. Unfortunately, this project was deemed high risk due to its urban nature and high sedimentation in the catchment, which we will be studying in more detail in the coming months. As a result the potential capacity to remove this structure would have cost a great deal and made the project economically unviable. 

A derelict laid-stone weir (part of the Black Devon, Clackmannanshire)
This small weir is part of an old coal rail bridge that ran across the river here.  Now removed the base of the weir remains. Sadly, the weir owner in this instance now wishes to explore the potential for hydro at the site, so is not able to support a voluntary removal application.  

In total these weirs, if they were removed, will open a total of ~16km of downstream habits and ~25km of upstream river, plus access to a number of tributaries containing spawning ground and rediscover-able habitat.

The weirs included within this first application to the Open Rivers Fund, were been chosen since they are not and will never be the focus of barrier removal through the current barrier removal at the national level.  Yet, still pose a significant issue to fish migration, natural sediment transferal and other hydromorphological processes. These types of smaller river barriers are more numerous than the larger obstacles in our catchment and are often over-looked. The accumulative impact of these smaller barrier cannot be understated.