Salix River and Wetland Services Ltd., a bioengineering firm based in South Wales, has been busy for quite some time now with the transformation of Walthamstow Wetlands into the largest urban wetland reserve in Europe.
The company has just released this photo of the large modular pontoon with 13 tonne machine placing the silt behind nicospan revetment.
Salix began work on this £8.7 million project back in 2015, by testing the silt and setting up their base and starting to build the silt retention system.
Following the surveys, Salix started with the dredging of the silt in Reservoir 3 and building 2.4 hectares of new reedbeds in Reservoirs 1, 2 and 3, with the 30,000 cubic meters of dredged material.
In order to complete the work on time and on budget, the company has been using bucket dredging as well as pump-dredging, with the generators pumping silt from Reservoir 3 through pipes into the north end of Reservoir 1 to create banks of silt for the reeds to be planted in.
The wetlands will open to the public in spring 2017.