Eastern End update
East End update
by: Stuart H.
East End Activities – Early November
After the mandatory PT session to get warmed up, the Monday team headed to Northmoor Pound at South Cerney. They have been deployed here for the last three weeks, mostly along towards the Bow Wow end, the aim being to remove a lot of dead ash that is liable to fall across the tow path should any strong wind catch it. It looks a bit drastic to towpath users, but it would be more dire if the trunks were to fall on top of a passing walker.
What3Words: cherished.maybe.sports
There’s a fair amount of wood either falling or fallen that needs to be cleared out.
For the first 2 weeks of this work, the eco saws were used to cut up the smaller branches. This week a chainsaw operator was available to tackle the bigger stuff.
Disposal of the wood falls into 3 categories, depending on size and quality. The thin brash and diseased wood is burnt on bonfires under in accordance with the CCT’s DEFRA D7 waste exemption. Burning may not be the ideal disposal option but it is understood that purchase or hire of a petrol driven chipper has been deemed unrealistic. Presumably the £2,000 plus cost for a chipper capable of up to 150mm branches is deemed excessive for the east end usage. Plus, the use of petrol driven plant also involves the burning of hydrocarbons producing noise and exhaust pollution.
Second method of disposal is to create wildlife habitat by piling logs for bugs and small animals to colonise. Excluding diseased wood from the bug hotels will hopefully help to slow down the transmission of infection to other trees.
The third disposal route is to remove wood that is suitable for feeding into log sales processing. This week a van and trailer load was recovered to the Eastern Depot. This will be used to create income that is channelled into the restoration funds supporting the Phase 2 plans.
Over at the Eastern Depot, it’s still all hands on log production and delivery with 3 loads going out on each working day. One customer was intrigued to see how the logs were discharged from the van, presumably he had seen the walking floor trailers used for biomass deliveries to power stations. He was quite amazed to see that the Transit has a walking floor – well technically it’s a walk on floor, i.e. the volunteers walk on the floor to handball the logs out
Perhaps the keep fit elements of log deliveries could be used in the volunteer recruiting process, it must be a great selling point.
