Work on a £24 million water mains upgrade project in North Ayrshire was recently halted to ensure it did not impact on the natural habitat of wildlife, Scottish Water has revealed.

Caledonia Water Alliance is carrying out work for the company to install a new 7.3 mile-long strategic water main in the Irvine area, boosting the water mains network for some 85,000 people.

However, pipe-laying work was stopped after a colony of sand martins nested on both banks of an excavation housing a dewatering system, used to drain the ground of water, on a flood plain near the Garrier Burn at Drybridge.

-- Advertisement --

While the dewatering was able to continue, the use of heavy machinery could not and any work that would have had an adverse impact on the birds, such as the installation of valves, was suspended to give the chicks time to fledge the nests.

Jane McKenzie, Scottish Water's Communications Manager for the project, said: "Scottish Water is fully aware that breeding birds are protected in law and that the birds and their nest sites must be left undisturbed until the chicks have fledged.

"We take our environmental responsibilities very seriously and CWA, who are working on behalf of Scottish Water, ensured that we did not disturb the sand martins' natural habitat.

"While we continued with work on other parts of the project, any work that might have adversely affected the sand martins was restarted after the nesting season when the birds had left the area.

"Although Scottish Water's investment in our infrastructure in this part of Ayrshire is very important we are delighted that we were able to ensure our work did not prevent nature from taking its course."

The water mains project is expected to be completed in spring 2018.

(LM)