Blacklaw is a major wind farm development near Forth in South Lanarkshire. Planning permission was granted and contracts were let for the erection of 42 turbines and associated works. Our role in the project was to restore an abandoned opencast site and to provide quarried material for use in construction of the wind farm access roads and hardstandings.
For a considerable time prior to the award of contract, I & H Brown worked closely with the Client and the Main Contractor in negotiations with the regulatory authorities to finalise the planning consent, environmental conditions and other matters. The abandoned opencast coal site extended to 100 hectares and contained flooded excavation areas, along with major overburden dumps. There were no completed areas of restoration.
Our works included dewatering the flooded voids which contained over 100 million gallons of water. We used surface stockpiles for restoration elsewhere on the site and produced over 500,000 cubic metres of rock for construction of the access roads and hardstandings on the wind farm. Drilling and blasting of the rock was required to achieve suitable fragmentation and some in-quarry crushing and screening also took place. Two relatively thin coal seams were recovered cleanly for sale by the client.
The overburden dumps were removed and used to backfill the existing voids and quarry area prior to placing a final surface layer of peat. More than 500,000 cubic metres of peat were handled and total material movements exceeded 3,500,000 cubic metres.
A local watercourse traversed the quarry area and was temporarily diverted before its final restoration over a backfilled area of the site.
Environmental monitoring of noise, dust and water was required through out the contract. The work was completed using our modern fleet of over 40 items of earthmoving plant with a replacement value in excess of £7.5 million.
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