Wet West fiasco

[JMT]

Having been to all of the previous events I was happy to forgive & forget when there was no water in the Morriston 2 years ago. Lightening can & does apparently strike twice. I got there early today and gave up at 10.30 when there was no sign of water again! Last time it took at least an hour & a half to come up after they finally got it turned on. I think I've just done my last wet west!

[Jim Pullen]

Having been to all of the previous events I was happy to forgive & forget when there was no water in the Morriston 2 years ago. Lightening can & does apparently strike twice. I got there early today and gave up at 10.30 when there was no sign of water again! Last time it took at least an hour & a half to come up after they finally got it turned on. I think I've just done my last wet west!

We were one of the first to put on at ~1100, by which time the level had come up enough. We had enough time to run the upper a couple of times, then the lower and by on the road by 3. Yes it was annoying, that it wasn't on first thing, but it was completely out of the organisers control. I understand they rang the SEPA guy on the Friday to remind him, but he still needed calling on the Sunday!

[Dave McCraw]

Having been to all of the previous events I was happy to forgive & forget when there was no water in the Morriston 2 years ago. Lightening can & does apparently strike twice. I got there early today and gave up at 10.30 when there was no sign of water again! Last time it took at least an hour & a half to come up after they finally got it turned on. I think I've just done my last wet west!

Like Jim I was on the water about 11, so maybe you should have waited those few extra minutes!

Seriously though, if you have any suggestions, we're all ears. Unfortunately it's not possible for us to physically switch the dam on ourselves.

(There is a discussion kicked off in the main forum for event feedback, by the way).

[neilfarmer]

To be fair, it was not the fault of SEPA (Scottish Environmental Protection Agency) or SSE (Scottish and Southern Energy). There was a simple misunderstanding at some stage in the process, it may very well have been me that should have checked the release times, who knows.

What I can say though, is that SEPA had no involvement on Sunday and that the people at SSE were fantastic, when they knew there was a problem, they moved very fast to resolve it. The release was scheduled to start at 11am, I called them a 930am and the freshet had started at 10 (it must start slowly and then ramp up, they cannot just "open the gates").

The Water Framework Directive now controls all freshet releases and this task has been delegated to SEPA. The process for obtaining recreational releases is very new and has so far, served us very well! This year, SEPA have a structure in place to get things moving much earlier than previous years, and I would hope to know release dates by Christmas - I'll make sure that we can specify the times!!

I hope that you do make it up again Mike, I didn't get to paddle it this year either, but it is a great run!

[Jim Pullen]

Thanks for the clarification Neil, I must have got the wrong end of the stick about SEPA.

If you believe you can secure the dates earlier this year, is there any possibility of pushing for a Saturday release on the Morriston? It's much nicer to be able to take our time on it rather than rushing to get away for the 6-7hr drive south! I think the previous reason was that the villagers preferred a Sunday, but as there seemed to be very few paddlers in the village due to the improved shuttle service to and from the gun club, this shouldn't be an issue any more?

[Peter Brown]

While we're on the subject, is there a reason why the summer releases are on a Tues rather than, say, a weekend?

[JMT]

Having had such a long wait last time, I wasnt prepared to chance waiting this time with such a long drive back to Cumbria. The atmosphere & the quality of paddling on the Morriston is the main reason for me making the trip. The guys I've spoken to said it was 11.30 before it was runnable. Don't think I'll be back.

The shuttle info in the booklet we were given states the shuttle will be running on the upper section from 9am, so I'm surprised to hear that the water wasn't due to be running until 11am!